South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c11.9.1

c11.9.1

The Pāṇḍya Fratricidal War.—It was already pointed out in a previous lecture that the Pāṇḍya who ruled almost up to the time of this invasion was Māravarman Kulaśēkhara I. He had two sons known to history; one of them, a ‘natural’ son Vīra Pāṇḍya, he associated with himself in the Government from A.D. 1296. The other, the ‘legitimate’ son Sundara Pāṇḍya attained to that dignity sometime in A.D. 1302. Both these princes, Vīra Pāṇḍya and Sundara Pāṇḍya, take the prefix Jaṭāvarman in inscriptions, and should not be confounded with others of the name but with a different prefix. This difference of treatment between the two sons may have been due merely to a difference of age or ability. According to one authority Sundara Pāṇḍya was the elder; Amir Khusru makes him younger; but both of them Wassaf and Amir Khusru, agree that Sundara Pāṇḍya was ‘the legitimate’ and Vīra Pāṇḍya perhaps an ‘illegitimate’ son of the ruler for the time being. The preference given to Vīra Pāṇḍya either by advancing him to the position of co-regency, or because sometime about A.D. 1311 Kulaśēkhara, almost at the close of his life, actually ordered the succession in favour of Vīra Pāṇḍya, Sundara Pāṇḍya felt so far discontented as to assassinate his father and actually take possession of the throne. Vīra Pāṇḍya soon after attacked him and drove him out of Madura.