01Two crowns in one
His father was the Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja Narendra of Vengi, patron of the Telugu Mahabharata of Nannaya; his mother Ammangadevi was Rajendra Chola’s daughter. When the Chola king Athirajendra died in 1070 amid unrest, the Vengi prince, already a seasoned soldier, took the throne at Gangaikonda Cholapuram as Kulottunga. In the same years Vijayabahu I drove the Cholas out of Lanka, and Kulottunga let it go. He turned instead on Vikramaditya VI of the Western Chalukyas, his rival for the Deccan, and held his ground.
02Tolls, land and Kalinga
His inscriptions call him Sungam Tavirtta Chola, the Chola who abolished tolls, and trade moved freely along the coast. In 1086 his officers resurveyed the land for revenue. The Song annals record a Chola embassy at the Chinese court in 1077. Late in the reign his general Karunakara Tondaiman led an army against Anantavarman Chodaganga of Kalinga, and the poet Jayamkondar celebrated it in the Kalingattupparani, one of the great Tamil war-poems. A stone of 1083 records that a general of his renamed Visakhapatnam Kulottunga Cholapattinam.
