An ancient hill lineage (the Banas or Vanas) whose country lay in the upper Palar valley round Vellore and Tiruvallam and ran up toward the Kolar plateau; the campaign board shows a stone shrine of Bana and Chola date at Tiruvallam.
They served the Chola as feudatories and as commanders, and in the twelfth century they share the broken hill country with the Sambuvarayas and the Hoysala side of Kolar. Their holder in 1200 is unnamed.
Who he is
- Name
- not known for 1 January 1200
- Title
- Bana chief (Banarayar, Vanadhiraja, Mahabali Vanarayar), Chola feudatory
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Family
- An old lineage with its own dynastic title; no chief is named in the sources we reached for 1200.
- Confidence
- low
The English Wikipedia page on the Banas did not load; the account here rests on the campaign board's note and our background reading, so the evidence is marked thin.
Overlord
Kulottunga III Chola (nominally); the Hoysala pressure on Kolar is on the sik sheet
What it holds
- Tiruvallam and the Palar hill country
- The Vellore country (the fort of Vellore does not exist yet)
- Hill produce and the roads from the plateau to Tondaimandalam
How it was acquired
Ancestral.
Allies and rivals
Chola vassals; the Hoysala and the Nolamba remnants press from Kolar.
How things stand that morning
Present, minor, unnamed.
Wealth
Hill and tank paddy; tolls on the plateau roads.
Military
Feudal retinues; no number.
Threats
- Hoysala pressure from Kolar
- Telugu Choda raids
Places of note
- Tiruvallam: Temple village of Bana and Chola date at the Palar and Niva confluence.
Where the sources disagree
- The campaign board entry vellore-country and tiruvallam call it a country held by chiefs who take Chola titles; we give those chiefs to the Banas with low confidence, since no source we reached names the chief of the Vellore country in 1200.
Evidence: The campaign board entry note plus background reading; no inscription read.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: Thin evidence; the Kolar side belongs to the Karnataka sheet.
Primary sources for Chola empire
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- The Lesser Chronicle (the continuation of the Mahavamsa), Dhammakitti and later monks of the Mahavihara tradition (the first continuation about the 13th century (chapters 37 to 79), carried on in stages to the 18th century). The only narrative source for Lanka in 1200. Read online
- History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
- The Leiden grants of Rajaraja I and Kulottunga I concerning the Srivijaya vihara at Nagapattinam, The Chola chancery (Rajaraja I, Rajendra I, Kulottunga I) (the Larger plates about 1005 to 1014 (completed under Rajendra I); the Smaller plates 1090). Background documents for the relations between the Cholas and the Malay world. Read online
- Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Various (Kakatiya chancery and temple scribes), edited by P. Sreenivasachar (inscriptions of the 10th to 15th centuries; edited 1940 to 1942). The Kakatiyas of Orugallu (Warangal) are known for 1200 almost entirely from inscriptions, and this Hyderabad Archaeological Series corpus is the main printed collection. Read online
- Epigraphia Carnatica: inscriptions of the Mysore country, Various (Hoysala chancery and temple scribes), edited by B. Lewis Rice and R. Narasimhachar (inscriptions of the 4th to 19th centuries; the series ran from 1886 to 1905, revised from 1972). The Hoysala kingdom of Veera Ballala II (reigning 1173 to 1220) is documented almost wholly by the inscriptions in this series, arranged by district and taluk with full English translations. Read online
- Epigraphia Zeylanica: lithic and other inscriptions of Ceylon, Various (the Polonnaruwa kings' chanceries), edited by D. M. de Zilva Wickremasinghe, H. W. Codrington and S. Paranavitana (inscriptions of the 3rd century BC to the 18th century; the series ran from 1904). Prints with translation the stone records of the Polonnaruwa kings who held or lost the throne around 1200. Read online
- South Indian Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India), Various (Chola, Pandya and other chanceries and temple scribes), edited by E. Hultzsch, V. Venkayya, H. Krishna Sastri and successors (inscriptions of the 7th to 17th centuries; the series ran from 1890). The temple inscriptions printed here are the primary record of the Tamil country in 1200. Read online
- Travancore Archaeological Series, Various (Kerala chiefs, temples and merchant guilds), edited by T. A. Gopinatha Rao, K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer and A. S. Ramanatha Ayyar (inscriptions of the 9th to 18th centuries; the series ran from 1910 to 1938). The main corpus for the Kerala coast. Read online
4 more in the sources library for Southern India and Sri Lanka.
Sources and studies
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.