Chola Army and Campaigns
Not much is known about the military conquests of Uttama. The Chola army seems to have been in continued battles with the Pandyas and their ally the Sinhalas in Illam or Sri Lanka. Several Chola coins of Uttama have been found in the Pandya country and in Eelam as proof of Uttama’s activities there. We have an copper-plate inscription of him, now at the Government Museum Chennai. It bears the symbol of a seated tiger with two fish beside it and bears the line This is the matchless edict of the King who taught justice to all the Kings in his realm. But the genealogical section of the plates was lost. However we do have the appendix portion at the end.
There are indications he upgraded the army, not just in troop levels but also in quality and organization. It is known through inscriptions that, at least from Uttama Chola's time, warriors were provided with waistcoats of armour.
An important general during his reign was Paluvettaraiyar Maravan Kandanar, who also served under Sundara Chola. His son Kumaran Maravan also served Uttama Chola.
Yet another chief Ambalavan Paluvurnakkan (also known as Vikramasola-Maharajan of Kuvalalam) features during Uttama Chola's rule and continues into Rajaraja I's reign.
Read more about this topic: Uththama Chola
Famous quotes containing the words army and/or campaigns:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)