The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c10.9

c10.9

¹ Mr. Venkayya remarked (p. 56, *A. R. E.*, 1908) of Śrīmāra: ‘As he is also said to have conquered Māyāpāndya, who must have belonged to his own family, there is enough evidence that there were internal dissensions among the Pāndyas already in his reign’; and in this he has been followed by M. Dubreuil. But I do not think that Māyāpāndya means ‘a person belonging to the Pāndya family’; if anything it means just the contrary, and does not support the inferences of Venkayya about internal dissensions which are far-fetched indeed. We cannot of course get any light on this matter from the Ceylon account; for any impostor, to make himself accepted in Ceylon, must have claimed kinship with the Pāndya ruling family. Venkayya again is not any way more fortunate in his attempts to identify this Māyāpāndya. He says: (*ibid*) ‘In this connection it is worthy of note that the relationship of No. 11 (my number 9) Varagunavarman to his predecessor is not given in the Tamil portion of the larger Sinnamanūr plates, while the Sanskrit portion of the same plates mention the relationship only indirectly. No. 12 (my number 10) Parāntaka is said to have been the younger brother of Varaguna and the son of Śrīmāra. Consequently it is not impossible that it was Varaguna who sought help from the Singhalese in order to secure the Pāndya throne’. Mr. Venkayya appears in this case to have relaxed his usual standards about evidence in his anxiety to discover the identity of Māyāpāndya. His whole argument turns upon the Tamil portion not mentioning the relationship of Varagunavarman to his predecessor, and the Sanskrit portion mentioning it only indirectly. The Tamil portion not only fails to mention relationships, in other cases, but omits all reference to Jatila Parāntaka; the Sanskrit portion mentions the relationship, but only ‘indirectly.’ I am unable to see any logic in the inferences made by Mr. Venkayya from this supposed ‘indirectness’. Personally I am of opinion that much trouble might be avoided if the epigraphists give up the habit of treating the integral parts of one inscription in different languages as altogether different inscriptions. There is enough indication in the inscription that Varagunavarman ruled in his turn and enjoyed a fairly prosperous reign. This is the text: