Kandalur Salai

01Four words in the meykirti

From about the fourth year of his reign, Rajaraja’s inscriptions open with the meykirti that begins Tirumagal pola. Its first deed is kandalur salai kalam aruttaruli, he who graciously cut off the kalam at Kandalur Salai. The same words are carved on the walls of the Brihadeeswara temple at Thanjavur. Kalam can mean a ship, a battlefield or a feeding hall, and salai was a hall or school, so scholars still argue whether Rajaraja burnt a Chera fleet in its harbour or broke up a famous martial school and its endowment. Either way, it was a blow at the Chera hold on the western sea.

02What followed

Kandalur was the first move in a war that ran for years across the far south. Rajaraja went on to take Madurai from the Pandyas, Kollam on the Kerala coast and Udagai in the western hills, and he crossed to Lanka to take Anuradhapura. The western sea trade, with its pepper and its Arab and Persian ships, came under Chola watch. The campaign also gave his son Rajendra the experience of overseas war that he used against Srivijaya in 1025.

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 →