Jayasimha II and the confederacy of Bhoja, Rajendra and Gangeya

01The Chalukya claim

An inscription of Jayasimha II dated 1019, from Belgaum district, gives him the title of the moon to the lotus that was Bhoja, meaning he outshone him, and says he searched out and beat the confederacy of Malava, broke the Chola and the Chera. It presents the Chalukya king as having beaten off an alliance of the Paramara Bhoja, the Chola Rajendra and, as other records suggest, the Kalachuri Gangeyadeva, which had attacked from north and south together.

02The other side

Paramara inscriptions, for their part, credit Bhoja with victory over the Karnata king, and the Kalvan plates suggest Bhoja’s power reached into the northern Konkan in these years. Rajendra Chola’s records claim the conquest of Rattapadi and a victory over Jayasimha at Maski in 1021. Historians read the evidence as a hard war on several fronts in which the Chalukyas lost ground in the north to Bhoja but held their core, and no side gained a decisive victory.

Person · Reigned 1014–1044 CE (co-regent from 1012)Rajendra Chola IRajendra, son of Rajaraja, took the Chola empire to its height. His army marched to the Ganga and brought its water home; his fleet crossed the Bay of Bengal and struck Srivijaya; and he built a new capital, Gangaikonda Cholapuram, the city of the Chola who took the Ganga.Read →