Rajaraja I becomes king of the Cholas

The thirty years after the death of Parantaka I in 955 were, in K. A. Nilakanta Sastri’s words, a period of weakness and confusion for the Cholas. By 973 Sundara Chola had won back most of Tondaimandalam from the Rashtrakutas, but in 969 (other accounts: 971) his heir Aditya II was murdered; an inscription of Rajaraja’s reign confiscating the property of the assassins led Sastri to conclude that Uttama Chola, son of Sundara’s uncle Gandaraditya, had a part in the conspiracy — a view later disputed. Uttama was recognised as heir and reigned from 973. According to the Tiruvalangadu plates of Rajendra I, the people wanted Arumolivarman, Aditya’s younger brother, as king, but he stood aside in favour of Uttama; when Uttama died in 985, Arumolivarman was crowned in the month following 25 June, taking the name Rajaraja. Sastri saw in his reign the beginning of ‘a century of grandeur and glory’ for the dynasty.

Rajaraja began with campaigns in the far south against the allied Pandyas, rulers of Kerala and kings of Sri Lanka: from the fourth year of his reign his inscriptions bear a title referring to a victory at Kandalur Salai in the Kerala country. A naval expedition overran northern Sri Lanka, where Anuradhapura was destroyed and Polonnaruwa became the seat of a Chola province (the conquest is usually dated 993). He annexed Gangapadi, Nolambapadi and Tadigaipadi in the southern Deccan, which intensified his conflict with Tailapa II’s Western Chalukyas — the first battle, in 992, went against the Cholas — and he intervened in Vengi. In 1010 he completed the great Shiva temple of Rajarajeshvara (the Brihadisvara) at Thanjavur; he also encouraged the Shailendra king of Srivijaya to build a Buddhist monastery at Nagapattinam (the Chudamani vihara, being built in his 21st year, 1005/1006). He died in 1014, and under his son Rajendra I the empire reached its greatest extent.