South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c11.35

c11.35

Śrīrangam, a possible alternative.—The possible alternatives to this would be, having regard to the description of gold roofing, Śrīrangam. If exclusive attention should be paid to the name alone, Shiyāḷi would be an alternative; and the incidental statement in the description of Amir Khusru, who puns on the legless character of the Lingas, that they all at one kick from the horse of Islam jumped to the island of Lanka, may lead one to identify Brahmastpuri with Rāmēśvaram. This last or Shiyāḷi, so far as our present knowledge of these places goes, does not answer the other details. Śrīrangam may be just possible; but the difficulty against Śrīrangam is that the temple does not contain both the images of Śiva and Vishnu like the other two above. If Chidambaram is Brahmastpuri, what is Bir Dhul, what is Kandur and what is Jalkotta. It must be borne in mind here that at the time Sundra Pāṇḍya put the father to death, Kulaśēkhara, the father ‘Kales Dewar,’ was apparently in Madura. Sundara put him to death, took possession of the treasury and installed himself in Madura before Vīra Pāṇḍya could intervene. Hence it is clear that Vīra Pāṇḍya was not in government at Madura, and in all probability his government was elsewhere. We pointed out elsewhere that Māravarman Kulaśēkhara resided in his palace outside Jayankoṇḍaśolapuram, six miles from Gangaikoṇḍaśolapuram as his capital. That apparently was the capital of the Chola country under Pāṇḍyan rule. Either the whole of the town, or the new suburb in which Kulaśēkhara erected his palace, might have gone by the name Vīra Śoḷan for various reasons. Bir Dhul cannot be anything else than Vīra Śoḷan, in the mouth of the northern foreigner unless he meant ‘the Chola country under Bir’, as a whole. Amir Khusru speaks of the country as ‘the country of Bir’ which is synonymous with Vīra, may be Vīra Śoḷa or Vīra Pāṇḍya. Apparently Amir Khusru means Vīra Pāṇḍya. If Bir becomes Vīra, Dhul by itself cannot stand for any particular place, and seems to be the Tamil Śola either the country or the king, thus rendered in the phonology of the northern foreigner. Gangaikoṇḍaśoḷapuram, or its new neighbour might have borne this name as these often did change their names with successive rulers. If Jayangoṇḍaśoḷapuram, the possible capital of Vīra Pāṇḍya is the Bir Dhul, Kandur is almost certainly Kaṇṇanūr (the Khaṇḍanapuram of Sanskrit writers). If Jayangoṇḍaśoḷapuram were attacked, the ruler thus attacked would move for shelter to Kaṇṇanūr, the capital of the Hoysalas till recently, a place strongly fortified in their time, and occupying a strategic position along the main artery of communication between Trichinopoly and Tiruvaṇṇāmalai which at the time was one of the capitals of the Hoysalas. Wassaf states clearly that when Malik Kafur invaded Haḷēbīd, the Hoysala asked for help, and of the brothers it was Vīra Pāṇḍya that sent it. If that is so, when the Pāṇḍya’s capital Bir Dhul had been attacked, he would naturally look for assistance to the Hoysala, and such assistance as the Hoysala could render must come from Tiruvaṇṇāmalai, the eastern capital, or from Mysore, wherefrom an army did come into the Chola country ordinarily by way of Tiruvaṇṇāmalai. Hence Kandur is unmistakably Kaṇṇanūr, north of Śrīrangam. The campaign oscillated between Jayangoṇḍaśolapuram (Bir-Dhul) and Kaṇṇanūr (Kandur); and that would certainly be justified by the respective position of these places. There is the additional recommendation that the Pāṇḍya retreated from Kandur for shelter to the forests; the locality of Kaṇṇanūr would suit it very well indeed as he could retire into the hilly tracts of the Kollimalais on the borders of Salem and South Arcot.