01The younger brother
He was the second son of Someshvara I. Bilhana tells that the father wanted Vikramaditya to succeed him and that the prince refused to pass over his elder brother. Someshvara II took the throne in 1068, quarrelled with him, and leaned on the Cholas. In 1076 Vikramaditya deposed him. He had married a Chola princess, daughter of Virarajendra, and had fought in the Chola succession of 1070, losing out to Kulottunga, with whom he then contested the Deccan for years. His feudatories grew strong under him, the Hoysala Vishnuvardhana above all, but while he lived they stayed feudatories.
02Kalyani’s court and temples
Bilhana came from Kashmir and wrote the Vikramankadevacharita in eighteen cantos about his patron. Vijnaneshvara wrote the Mitakshara at Kalyani; its rules of inheritance by birth governed most of India’s Hindu families into the modern courts. The Kannada inscriptions of his reign run into the hundreds. Temples in the Kalyani Chalukya style spread over the Tungabhadra country; at Itagi in Koppal district his general Mahadeva built the Mahadeva temple in 1112, which an inscription there praises as the emperor among temples.
