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country a province of the Chola empire. His contemporary and rival Tribhuvanamalla Vikramāditya VI, the powerful Western Chālukya emperor of Kalyani (A.D. 1076-1126) was not happy with the merger of the age-long sovereign Chalukya State of Vengi with the Chola empire and tried more than once to capture the Vengi kingdom. As long as Kulottunga Chola I was alive, Tribhuvanamalla could not achieve any substantial benefit in the Vengi affairs. But when Kulottunga died in about A.D. 1118, the Chālukya king renewed his attack on Vengi and defeating all the Chola subordinates annexed the kingdom from Dākshāramam to Nellore to the Chālukyan empire. Vengi continued to be under the Western Chalukyas till A.D. 1134. The māndalika rulers of the coastal Andhra unitedly fought a decessive battle under the Chola banner with the Chalukya viceroys and drove them away from Vengi. The Velanati Chola chief Kulottunga Rajendra I and his son Gonka II were the most powerful participants in that battle and subsequently they became the virtual masters of the Vengi country. The new Chola king Kulottunga II who succeeded Vikrama Chola (A.D. 1118 to 1133) could not exercise any effective authority over the Velanāți ruler Gonka II who came to power simultaneously in Vengi. It was a major political change that took place in the coastal Andhra in A.D. 1134-5, the date of the famous Godavari battle, when the Chālukyan authority in Vengi came to an end and the Velanāți chief Gonka II became the ruler.
There is a vague reference to this event in the Chilumuru Kaifiyat (Tenali-19) which states that Ganapatideva of the Gajapati throne having conquered the country gave the Velanadu region to his general Kulottunga Chola. The China Makkena Kaifiyat (Sattenapalli-16) states that in śaka 1056 Tribhuvana Chakravarti Rajadhirajadeva on the occasion of a lunar eclipse on Mägha śu. 15, Monday, in Pramādi granted the village to Ambaḍipudi Peda Rāmabhadra Somayaji as agrahāra. Therefore the ruling king on the said date was Chola Kulottunga II, who bears the title Tribhuvanachakravarti. This is a clear indication that Kulottunga Chola, that is the powerful Velanāti Chief Kulottunga Choda Gonkarāja became the subordinate ruler of the country not under any Gajapati king, but under the Chola king Kulottunga II (A.D. 1133 to 1145), that too a nominal subordination. Therefore, the śaka 1056 (A.D. 1134) uniformly referred to in the Kaifiyats signifies this major political change in Vengi. But we have to reject the names Ganapati and Gajapati.
The second part of the statement that his minister Goparāju Rämanna gave Karinikam mirāsis to several Niyogis is also partly acceptable to the extent that it took place during the reign of some Gajapati king in the latter half of the 15th century A. D. and not in A. D. 1145 as stated in these records.
