The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

79 - The Historical Materials
inappropriate. We would therefore be justified in looking for
Kāriyāṟu somewhere on the frontiers of the viceroyalty of Kāñcī.
About the time to which this refers, the distribution of territory was
such that between the Cōḻa kingdom proper and the territory
dependent upon Kāñcī, there was at least one region which had its
own chieftain though that chieftain might have acknowledged
allegiance to the Cōḻa ruler for the time being. These chieftains who,
at different periods of the Śangam age, counted, five, seven, eleven
and fourteen, according to occasion, ruled their own territory and
acknowledged allegiance to one or other of the three crowned
kingdoms as occasion demanded, and asserted their independence as
opportunity offered. It is petty wars among these and their
deep-seated hostility to one another that were responsible at this time
for the extension of the territory of the Cēra through the middle
block of territory comprising within it the territory of Kongu, the
chieftaincy of Adiyamāṉ of Tagaḍūr and the chieftaincy of Ōri round
the Kollimalais.
There was another chieftain Pāri whose territory seems to have lain
still farther west, or, as some take it, in the south. There was still
another who does not figure in these transactions, and his territory
lay well within the territory of modern Mysore. The territory,
therefore of Malaiyamān Kāri, with his capital at Tirukkovilūr, came
actually between the Cōḻa [45] kingdom proper and the province of
Kāñcī. The chieftain Kāri was at this time in active alliance with the
Cēras whose relative he was and for whom he actually conquered the
territory round Kollimalais as was stated already. Hence if Kāñcī
could have been the objective of attack, assistance from the Cōḻa
kingdom could not always be at hand. It is one of such attacks that is