The Chola recovery of Tondaimandalam

01Twenty years of occupation

The evidence is in the dating of inscriptions. For about twenty years after Takkolam, temple records around Kanchi and Tiruvannamalai are dated in the regnal years of Krishna III, who called himself the taker of Kachchi and Tanjai. From the late 960s these give way to Chola dating again. Krishna III died in 967, and his successors were soon fighting for their own survival in the Deccan; the Rashtrakuta hold on the Tamil country loosened and the Cholas moved in.

02Aditya Karikala

The leading soldier of these years was Sundara Chola’s elder son Aditya II, called Aditya Karikala. The Leiden plates and other records credit him with victories in the south, where he fought and killed the Pandya Vira Pandya, and his inscriptions appear in Tondaimandalam in these years. He was murdered around 969 in a palace conspiracy. The recovered north passed in time to his younger brother, who ruled as Rajaraja I from 985.

Person · Reigned 985–1014 CERajaraja Chola IArulmozhi Varman took the name Rajaraja when he was crowned in 985, and in twenty-nine years turned the Chola kingdom of the Kaveri delta into the greatest power of the south, with a navy that reached Lanka and the Maldives. In 1010 he completed the Rajarajeshvaram at Thanjavur, the Brihadeeswara temple.Read →