Person · Chola emperor
Kulottunga I
Also known as Kulōttuṅka Cōḻaṉ, Kulothunga Chola I, Kulottunga Chola I, Rajendra Chola (birth name), Abhaya
Kulottunga I joined two royal houses: son of the Eastern Chalukya king of Vengi and, through his mother, grandson of Rajendra I, he ruled the Chola empire from Gangaikondacholapuram from 1070 to 1122. He lost Sri Lanka, held the Tungabhadra frontier against the Western Chalukyas and fought two wars in Kalinga, but is remembered as much for a great land survey, the abolition of tolls and envoys exchanged with China, Srivijaya, Pagan and the Khmer court.
- Date
- 1070–1122
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Chola
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
A Taoist temple inscription of 1079 at Guangzhou calls the king of Chulien (Chola) supreme chief of Srivijaya, while at Pagan King Kyanzittha claimed in an inscription to have converted the Chola king to Buddhism by a letter on gold foil.
His identification with Krimikanta Chola, persecutor of Ramanuja in Sri Vaishnava tradition, is disputed. The 1077 Chinese embassy of 'Ti-hua-kialo' is assigned to him by Nilakanta Sastri, but whether he actually ruled Srivijaya, as Tan Yeok Seong argued, is unsettled; so is his reported death at about 97.
Connections (5)
- Ruled fromGangaikondacholapuram
The Kalingattuparani says Kulottunga was brought up at the court of his grandfather Rajendra I in Gangaikondacholapuram, and the city remained his capital through a fifty-two-year reign. Kanchi ranked second, with a palace and a royal bathing hall from which many of his charters were issued. He took the Chola throne in 1070 after the death of Athirajendra, having first been crowned at Vengi, the Eastern Chalukya kingdom of his father Rajaraja Narendra.
- PatronageChidambaram
Kulottunga and his son Vikrama Chola enlarged the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram sixfold. An old inscription there records that his younger sister, Rajarajan-Kundavai-Alvar, gilded the Nataraja shrine and gave a gold vessel and a mirror, and that a stone shown to the Chola by the king of Kamboja was set before the deity on his order. A Sanskrit inscription at Chidambaram also narrates his defeat of the Five Pandyas and his victory pillar at Kanyakumari.
- CampaignAnantavarman Chodaganga
Kulottunga's second Kalinga war, fought before his 33rd regnal year, was led by his general Karunakara Tondaiman against the Eastern Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga, who fled; the army returned with great booty, and an inscription at Draksharama boasts that Kalinga was reduced to ashes. The court poet Jayamkondar celebrated the campaign in the Tamil war poem Kalingattuparani. The two kings were kin: Anantavarman's mother was a Chola princess, daughter of a Chola king variously identified.
- PatronageNagapattinam
In 1089 the ruler of Srivijaya sent two ambassadors to Kulottunga's court asking him to renew the old grants to the Chudamani Vihara at Nagapattinam, the Buddhist monastery that the Sailendra king Maravijayattungavarman had built in 1006 with Rajaraja I's support. One of Kulottunga's queens, Solakulavalli, is recorded as renewing the grant of the village of Anaimangalam to the vihara. A Chola king thus kept a foreign ruler's Buddhist foundation endowed on his own coast.
- CampaignKedah / Kadaram
As a prince Kulottunga led the naval expedition of about 1067 by which Virarajendra Chola claimed to have conquered Kadaram and returned it to its king, a Sailendra ruler who had asked for Chola help. Tan Yeok Seong, editor of a Srivijayan inscription at Canton, held that Kulottunga stayed on in Kadaram before returning to take the throne. The small Leyden grant of 1090 names the king of Kadaram as Kulottunga's vassal.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Kulottunga I", "Kalingattuparani" and "Chudamani Vihara". K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Cōḷas (1955); S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle Chola Temples (1977).
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