South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.13

c9.s2.13

The Coromandal Coast of Marco Polo.—From these various statements of Marco Polo we find that the Coromandal coast from the farthest south to the mouths of the Krishna, which were in some respects the limit of navigation, was ruled over by two dynasties of kings only; the Pāṇḍyas perhaps over the greater portion of the coast in the south, and the queen of the Kākatīyas in the north. At the time that Marco Polo was in this part of his voyage, queen Rudrāmba of the Kākatīyas must just have abdicated in favour of her grandson Pratāpa Rudra II, the last great king of the Kākatīya dynasty who came to the throne in A.D. 1291-2, and in whose reign Telingana, his kingdom, was reduced to subordination by the Muhammadans. The south was under a powerful king also, that is, Māravarman Kulaśēkhara I, who had a long reign of forty-four years, beginning with A.D. 1268 and reaching up to almost A.D. 1311. The territory of the former occupied the coast from almost the frontier of Ganjam up to the mouth of the northern Pennar and extended into the interior, north and south, across the middle of the present day Nizam's dominions. The region extending south from there to Cape Comorin and perhaps even farther west, was the territory of the Pāṇḍya, which at the time included the great bulk of the Chola kingdom. Its boundary was wide enough to include the district of Salem and part of Coimbatore extending south along the Western Ghats to the Cape. The northern frontier was uncertain. The conquests they made up to Nellore seem not to have been made permanently at all so that we might roughly demarcate the boundary between the Pāṇḍyas and the Hoysalas along a line drawn from Trichinopoly to Tiruvaṇṇāmalai and Villupuram along the road from Madura to Madras. On the other side of this line extended into the interior the territory of the Hoysalas, which under the greatest of their rulers Vīra Somēśvara, reached northwards as far as the frontiers of the Krishna, perhaps even a little beyond. The existence of a record of Somēśvara in Paṇḍharpur may, it is just possible, be held to indicate that his actual rule extended so far north.