South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.2

c9.2

The *Revival of Pāṇḍyan Greatness*.—We have already stated in the previous lecture that the power of the Pāṇḍyas suffered considerable eclipse in the civil war which brought on the intervention of both the king of Ceylon and the reigning Chola Rājādhirāja II and his heir-apparent, who became after him Kulottunga III. It is clear that the position of the Ceylonese as the arbiters of the destinies of the Pāṇḍya kingdom was made impossible by the active intervention of the Chola prince Kulottunga and the Chola feudatory Pallavarāyar. The campaign was continued so successfully by these latter that in the eleventh year of his reign, Rājādhirāja called himself conqueror of Īḷam and Madura. It seems to be that the war continued into the reign of Kulottunga III, as inscriptions of Kulottunga III describe him as ‘having taken Madurai (Madura), Īḷam (Ceylon), Karuvūr (Karur) and the crowned head of the Pāṇḍya’ and being pleased ‘to perform the anointment of heroes and the anointment of victors at Madura.’¹ This achievement was regarded as of such consequence that a grant of tax was made to a temple in the Puḍukoṭṭa State for the merit of the king during his stay at Madura,² and memory of this seems to be preserved in the name of the South-Western parts of Puḍukoṭṭa, Kaḍalaḍayāḍilangai koṇḍa Vaḷanāḍu (the division of him that took Ceylon without building a dam across the sea). This division was otherwise known Virudarājabhayankaravaḷanāḍu. Kulottunga III’s achievement therefore amounts to a reassertion of the authority of the Cholas over the Pāṇḍya country. All the same during the period of his reign there were a number of Pāṇḍyas ruling simultaneously, among whom at least one name stands prominent; that of Jaṭāvarman Kulaśekhara I, whose reign extended from A.D. 1190 to A.D. 1216, the last year of Kulottunga III himself. It is just possible that this Kulaśekhara was the son of Vikrama and grandson of the Kulaśekhara whose cause the Cholas supported in the war of succession.