01From Kandalur to Lanka
His meykirti, the court preamble cut at the head of his inscriptions, opens with his first victory: he destroyed the ships at Kandalur Salai on the Kerala coast. Then came the Pandyas of Madurai and the Cheras, and then Lanka. Chola armies sacked Anuradhapura, the island’s capital for over a thousand years, and set up a new Chola seat at Polonnaruwa, renamed Jananathamangalam, where a Chola Shiva temple still stands. His fleet took what the inscriptions call the twelve thousand islands, the Maldives. To the north he settled the Vengi question by marrying his daughter Kundavai to the Eastern Chalukya prince Vimaladitya.
02The great temple
The Rajarajeshvaram was finished on the 275th day of his 25th regnal year, in 1010. Its vimana rises about 66 metres, granite brought to a delta with no granite of its own. Rajaraja had the temple’s endowments cut into its own walls: the villages that fed it, the gold and jewels he and his sister Kundavai gave, the four hundred women dancers brought from across the kingdom, each named with her street and house. The same king granted a village to the Chudamani vihara at Nagapattinam, built by the Shailendra king of Srivijaya; the Leiden plates record it.
