The Chola army overran southern Kalinga and returned with spoil; Anantavarman escaped and kept his kingdom.
01Tribute refused
Kulottunga I joined the Eastern Chalukya and Chola lines in his own person and ruled from Gangaikonda Cholapuram from 1070. North of Vengi lay Kalinga, where Anantavarman Chodaganga of the Eastern Gangas had come to power. According to the Kalingattuparani, the Kalinga king failed to send his tribute to the Chola court. Kulottunga sent his general Karunakara Tondaiman, a chieftain of Vandai, at the head of an army that crossed the rivers of the Andhra coast, burnt and plundered, and fought the Kalinga host. Anantavarman fled, and the Chola army came home with elephants and treasure.
02The Parani
Jayamkondar, court poet of Kulottunga, sang the war in the parani form, a poem for a victory so great that a thousand elephants fell. Its scenes of ghouls and goddess Kali feasting on the field, and its loving praise of Kulottunga, made it one of the best-loved works of medieval Tamil. Anantavarman, the loser of this war, ruled for some seventy years more and is credited by Odia tradition and Ganga records with beginning the present Jagannath temple at Puri.
The war was the last great northern expedition of the Cholas, and its poem gave Tamil literature a whole genre’s finest example.