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The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11: Chapter VII. The First Empire—(Concluded)

The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11

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Contents

Chapter VII. The First Empire—(Concluded)

c11.2.1

THE history of the Pāndyan kingdom in the period between the restoration after the Kalabhra occupation and the fall of Madura before Parāntaka early in the tenth century, as made out by us so far, cannot by any means be regarded as either final or complete. Only the barest outlines of the story have been traced. Many points have had to be left unsettled; others have been noted as points for future study in the light of further evidence that may become available. We have also had to pass by a large number of stone inscriptions dated in the regnal years of Māran Sadayan and Sadayan Māran which undoubtedly belong to this period, but cannot with certainty be assigned to particular rulers. If we know so little about the main line of the Pāndyas, our knowledge about their subordinates and feudatories is even more limited. Passing references have been made already to the local chieftains known as Vēls, of whom the chiefs of the family of Ay seem to have enjoyed a long spell of power and influence in the mountainous country between the Tinnevelly district and Travancore. The Adigans of the Kongu country also felt the strength of the Pāndyan kings and were forced for a time to acknowledge their supremacy. Somewhat more prominent than these chieftains seem to have been the Muttarayar¹ who have left behind several epigraphical records which have only been partially studied till now.

c11.2.2

It is certain that these rulers held large portions of the Tanjore and Trichinopoly districts and possibly parts of Pudukottah for several generations and that the centre of their power was somewhere in the district of Tanjore. Sendalai, at present a small village near Tirukkāṭṭupaḷḷi, appears once to have been a flourishing town with the beautiful name Candralēkhā, and either this place or Niyamam in its neighbourhood was most probably the centre of Muttaraya rule. There is even now in existence a village by name Muttaraśanallūr within five miles of Trichinopoly. It is well known that a Perumuttarayan is mentioned twice in the Nālaḍiyār. The inscriptions from the Sendalai pillars mention three continuous generations of the Muttarayar; the last of them was Śuvaraṇ Māran alias Perumbiḍugu Muttarayan who claims to have fought at many places on behalf of the Pallavas and against the Pāndyas. There is also a curious coincidence in strange birudas between these rulers and the Pallava kings:—examples are Perumbiḍugu and Viḍēlviḍugu. These facts might lead one to suppose that these rulers were the subordinate allies of their Pallava contemporaries. On the other hand, there are other facts which seem to make it necessary to modify this conclusion. First, some kings of the Muttaraya line date their records in their own regnal years (18 of Iḷangō Muttarayan in No. 12 of 1899 from Sendalai).

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Secondly, one inscription (10 of 1899) which records a gift by a servant of a Muttarayan is dated in the tenth regnal year of Māraṇjaḍayan. And lastly, there is a gift by the queen of a Śatrubhayankara Muttarayan recorded in a stone inscription in the Tinnevelly district and dated in the twenty-first regnal year of Śaḍayan Māran (421 of 1906). In fact at one stage it was even supposed that the Muttarayar were a branch of the ruling house of the Pāndyas and emphasis was laid on the recurrence of the name Māran among the Muttaraya kings. But the facts set forth above indicate clearly that no simple hypothesis is likely to furnish the key to the true history of these chieftains. The best way of reconciling all the known facts about the Muttarayar seems to be to suppose that they held their sway for several generations in the debatable land between the Pāndyas and the Pallavas and ruled, either independently or in subjection to the Pāndyas or the Pallavas, in accordance with the trend of contemporary politics. It is unfortunate that no definite and detailed conclusions can be arrived at regarding the history of these rulers and the part they played in the story of South India. But the conjecture may be accepted that when Vijayālaya recovered Tanjore for the Cholas, he must have taken it from a Muttaraya chief. The Sendalai inscriptions call one of them the lord of Tanjai and Vallam.

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¹ I have not entered into the details of the records of the Muttarayar. Mr. K. V. Subramanya Aiyar discusses the Sendalai records very well in *E. I.*, vol. xiii, pp. 134 ff. and Mr. Gopinatha Rao in *Sen Tamil*, vol. vi, pp. 6 ff. *A.R.E.*, for 1899, pp. 5-6, and 1907, p. 54 are still useful.

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Before leaving the period of the First Pāndya Empire, as we have called it, an attempt may be made to bring together a few facts relating to the social and religious life of the age. We know very little of the details of government and administration; and the few references we get to Uttaramantrins and Mahāsāmantas have been noticed under the reign of Jaṭila Parāntaka above. We have a reference to an officer in charge of the elephants, under the name Matangajādhyakṣa in the Madras Museum plates and this, together with a reference to Tirumalai Vīrar and Parāntaka Vīrar in an inscription of the forty-second year of Māraṇjaḍayan from Kaḷugumalai,¹ is about all that we can gather on the military organization of the state in this period. One wonders if names like Parāntaka Vīrar are designations of particular regiments or groups of soldiers. There does not seem to have been any rigid distinction between the civil and military services under the government, and in Mārangāri we get the instance of a versatile officer who was famed alike for his services in war and as Uttaramantri and who was besides poet and orator. It seems likely that an expeditionary army was composed of troops brought together from several parts of the country each under its own leader, and we have instances of such leaders or the king himself, setting up permanent memorials celebrating the heroism of particular soldiers who distinguished themselves above their compeers in war. Thus from the Kalugumalai record which refers to the expedition against Śaḍayan Karunandan (43 of 1908) we learn that two soldiers did well in the storming of a fortress (கோட்டை அழித்து நன்று செய்து பட்டார்) before they fell, that they were in the household service (உள் வீட்டுக் கோயிற் சேவகர்) of one Mangala Enādi alias Eṭṭimannan, and that this Enādi¹ made an endowment for the merit of these two soldiers named Vinayantoḷu Sūran and Śāttan Nakkan. And again, the Trivandrum Museum stone inscription of the twenty-seventh year of Mārajaḍayan (277 of 1895) is a record of the fall of another warrior by name Raṇakīrti in the service of the king before the fortress of Kāraikkōṭṭai; and as this Raṇakīrti is said to have been a very loving servant of the king, it is not unlikely that the king himself caused this stone to be set up and engraved.

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¹ Inscription No. 863 of 1917. Mr. Krishna Sastri (A.R.E., 1918), says that the reference to Parāntaka Vīrar suggests the time of the father of Rājasimha, the donor of the Sinnamanūr grant. I do not know if he had any difficulty in assigning this record to Parāntaka I Pāndya and I do not think that Parāntaka II reigned as many as forty-two years. I have therefore treated the record as belonging to the earlier king.

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¹ Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao says: ‘Enādi corresponds to the European knighthood. The recipient of this honour must be the commander of an army and must have distinguished himself in the battlefield. The king adorns such a worthy soldier with a signet ring and confers upon him the title of Enādi. See the commentary on eighth sutra of Purattiṇaiyiyal, Poruḷadikāram, Tolkāppiyam,’ Trav. Arch. Series, vol. i, p. 4, n. 9.

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The kings as a rule seem to have been very generous patrons of learning and the arts. The few long epigraphs of this age that have come down to us furnish, by their poetic merit, clear proof of the high state of literary culture in the Sanskrit and Tamil languages in the Pāndya country and are evidently compositions of court poets who were regularly maintained by the kings. The names of some of these composers of *praśastis* have been preserved in the records. These compositions which are recorded in the copper plates which register the more important royal grants are, as we have seen, the most important source for the general history of the rulers of this age; but they also furnish information on several minor matters of considerable interest to the student of social life. We learn very casually from the Madras Museum plates that there was a colony of Brahmins from Magadha; and that they had a separate *grāmam* set apart for them by name Śabdāli and this may be accepted as some evidence that the south of India was in those days not isolated from the north as is sometimes thought. We are able to trace the prevalence of two subordinate divisions adapted evidently to local administrative purposes. One of them is referred to as *nāḍu* or *kūrram* and the Sanskrit part of the Sinnamanūr grant even applies the term *rāṣṭra* to the same division.

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The *nāḍu* seems to have been the connecting link between the kingdom as a whole and the smallest unit of local administration which is referred to usually as *grāmam*. The names of *grāmams* usually end in *mangalam*, *kuḍi* and *ūr* and occasionally in *vayal*. The forms observed on the occasions when kings made gifts of whole villages are very interesting and deserve some notice. The gift is always a *dānam* in the religious sense and is expressed usually by the phrase நீரோட்டடிக்கொடுத்தான், which the Sinnamanūr plates render into *ambupūrvam*. The boundary of the village to be given away was generally fixed by following the beat of a female elephant that was let loose for the purpose as is indicated by ‘மன்னவனது பணியால் வடிவமையப் பிடிசூழ்ந்தான்’ of the Madras Museum grant and *karēṇu sañcāra vibakta sīmā* of the Sinnamanūr grant; and the boundary was marked by stones and live fences of *kaḷḷi* (எல்லை யகத்துக் கல்லுங் கள்ளியும் நாட்டி) and also clearly recorded in writing. The grant was invariably engraved on copper plates and a high officer of state was entrusted with the task of drawing up and recording the *āṇatti* or royal order in proper form. It is curious that the scribes are generally the *Perumbaṇaikkārans* of the kings making the grant.¹ All the gifts, when they did not go to temples, seem to have been in favour of Brahmaṇas and the lands so granted to Brahmaṇas had a recognized legal status *brahmadēyam*.

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This status is expressed in set phrases of which the Madras Museum grant is a good example: ‘பிரம்ம தேயமாகக் காராண்மையும் மீயாட்சியும் உள்ளடங்க ஸர்வபரிஹாரமாக நீரோட்டடிக் குடுக்கப்பட்டது’. *Kārāṇmai* and *Miyātci* are technical terms as can be seen from the Sanskrit part of the Sinnamanūr plates which keeps the terms as such in the phrase ‘*Kārāṇmai mīyātci yutam samastam*’. We have at present no means of fixing the exact meanings of these terms. But as *Kāraṇmai* seems etymologically connected with cultivation and *Miyātci* likewise with supervision and control, we may not be far wrong if we take the terms to indicate the rights of tenancy and landlordship respectively.¹ The clear renunciation of all the rights of the donor contained in the phrase *sarvaparihāramaka* must also be noticed. When the gift has been completed the king generally requests his successors a d every one that comes after him to respect his *dāna* and this request is reinforced in the records by suitable quotations from the sacred laws (*Smṛti*) of the land. One circumstance recorded in the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant is of considerable importance and it is unfortunate that the meaning of the text here should not be clearer than it is. The conditions under which this grant was made are very peculiar. The donee claims that Vēḷvikkuḍi was granted to his ancestors by an ancient Pāṇḍya king Kuḍumi and that this gift was cancelled by the Kaḷabhra interregnum and that this ought to be restored to him.

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It is strange that this man should have waited for seven generations after the Pāṇḍyan restoration to reclaim the grant and at that late day should start by quarrelling with the king over the matter (*ākrōdhikka*). What followed must be related in the words of the grant ‘என்று நின்றவன் விஞ்ஞாப் பியஞ்செய்ய நன்றுநன்றென்று முறுவலித்து நாட்டானின் பழமையாதல் காட்டிநீ கொள்கவென்ன, நாட்டாற்றன் பழமையாதல் காட்டினானங்கப் பொழுதேய்.’ Evidently the king does not seem to have at first taken the petitioner seriously; he laughed at his impudence and perhaps thought it an easy way of dismissing the petition by demanding a proof (நாட்டு) of the original gift and of the antiquity of the petitioner's rights; but strangely enough, the proof was produced then and there, and the king forthwith renewed the gift. The difficulty lies in our inability to understand நாட்டு in the passage cited above.¹ But most probably it was only a general term for satisfactory evidence. And the evidence that was produced in this case was most likely a written document which had just been found by the petitioner on the strength of which he made bold to press his suit in the manner indicated.

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¹ Mr. Krishna Sastri does well in not translating this term in his edition of the Veḷvikkuḍi grant and thus declining to follow Venkayya's lead in rendering it into ‘chief drummer’. பணை has other meanings besides ‘drum’, one of which is ‘a row of horses’. May பெரும்பணைக்காரன் mean chief cavalry officer?

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¹ Cf. V. Venkayya, *I. A.*, vol. xxii, p. 74, n. 89.

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¹ See K. G. Sankara in *I. A.*, vol. li, p. 215. Mr. L. D. Swamikkannu Pillai was surely wrong if he assumed that oral evidence was in question here. I am unable to accept Mr. Krishna Sastri's translation of நாட்டால் into ‘(by a reference to) the district (assembly)’. நாடு does mean ‘district’ as I have pointed out above and this explanation of நாட்டால் as the instrumental of நாடு will be plausible if we had clear proof otherwise, which we do not have, of the existence, at this period of such district assemblies. But this is not the only difficulty. If it was a reference to the district assembly, that ought to have been found easier to make soon after the Pāndya restoration under Kadungōn than so many generations after him; and we do not say why the petition was not made earlier. Again the proof must have been such that (1) it was missed for long; (2) it was capable of production before the king at a moment's notice; and (3) it must have been so conclusive as evidence that the king was ready to accept it on the spot without any further enquiry. The phrases in the text of the grant clearly imply all this. And these conditions are best satisfied by a written document like a copper plate grant--what shall we not pay to get this plate if that were possible! I therefore propose to follow Mr. K. G. Sankara and make நாட்டால் the instrumental of நாட்டு der. from நாடு = fix, establish,

c11.11.1

The grāmam was the unit of local administration as pointed out before, and there are enough indications to show that as a rule it was well able to take care of its affairs and that it inspired confidence in the king of the country by efficiency and rectitude in its conduct of affairs. An inscription from Tiruccendūr (26 of 1912) tells us that the king Varaguna Mahārāja distributed among sixteen villages a large endowment he made to the local temple for meeting the cost of service in the temple throughout the twelve months of the year. The total endowment consisted of 1,400 gold *kāśus* and these *kāśus* were to be a permanent endowment, only the interest being spent for the purposes specified. The rate of interest is fixed at two kalams of paddy per annum on each *kāśu*. The penalty for default strikes us however as severe. It is that interest is doubled during the period of default and in addition a heavy fine of twenty-five gold *kāśus* is to be paid to the temple. Again a sum of 290 gold *kāśus* was, in the sixteenth year of the same king, placed in the hands of the assembly of Ambāsamudram (*Varaguṇa-mahārājar Toṇḍaināṭṭu ppeṇṇaikkarai Araiśūr Viṛrirundu Iḷangōkkuḍi ccavaiyār kaiyirkkuḍutta kāśu Irunuṛruṭṭoṇṇūru*) to be utilized likewise as a permanent endowment ; the interest on the endowment was fixed at the same rate as in the other gift viz., two kalams of paddy per annum per *kāśu* ;

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the proceeds comprising 580 kalams of paddy per annum to be given by the assembly were to be devoted to meet the cost of offerings (*tiru amudu*) to be made four times a day in the temple of Tiruppōttuḍaiya Bhaṭārar at Iḷangōkkuḍi according to a detailed schedule of offerings given in the inscription ; and it was made the duty of the servants of the temple and a committee of the assembly to see that the expenditure was properly incurred from day to day (*Bhaṭārar paṇimakkaḷum Iḷangōkkuḍi ccavai vāriyarum uḍaninṛu . . . nāngu kālamum-tiruvamidu-śeluttum-paḍi*).¹ Again the Trichinopoly inscription of the eleventh year of Varaguṇa records another endowment of 125 kalanjus of gold for the regular supply of ghī for the burning of four perpetual lamps and five other lamps in the temple of Tirumalai Bhaṭārar. This endowment was placed in fixed deposit with the Nagarattār of Śirrambar, and its proper administration was vested in the Pati of Śirrambar and the servants of the temple as trustees—(இவ்வொட்டின பரிசுநெய் அட்டுவிப்பதற்கு அமைந்து புணைப்பட்டோம் சிற்றம்பர்பதியும் பாதமூலத்தோமும்).¹ It may well be that the Nagarattār of Śirrambar were a corporation of merchants in the place; but it is not possible to say who the Pati was. He might have been the head of the corporation of merchants or a royal officer. The analogy of the Ilaṅgōkkuḍi-ccavai vāriyam points to the former alternative.

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It is very interesting to see that the kaḷanju mentioned in this record is the same as the gold kāśu, the coin being apparently described by its weight here;² we cannot however be sure of the exact weight of the kaḷanju itself in those days. A record in some respects more interesting than these comes from Mānūr in the Tinnevelly district and it is dated in the thirty-fifth year of Māranjaḍayan. If this Māranjaḍayan were the same as Varaguṇa Mahārāja, as probably he is, then the record may be assigned to about A.D. 800 and would thus precede the famous Uttiramallūr records of the time of Parāntaka I by well over a century. This fact deserves to be stressed a little as this inscription contains a record of rules for membership in the Sabha of the village which have been summed up¹ as follows by the official epigraphist (Madras) in the *Annual Report for 1913*: ‘It is stated that the children of shareholders in the village, only one, who is well behaved and has studied the *Mantra Brāhmaṇa* and one *Dharma* (i.e. Code of Law) may be on the village assembly (*manru*) to represent the share held by him in the village and only one of similar qualifications may be on the assembly for a share purchased, received as present or acquired by him as *strīdhana* (through his wife); (2) that (shares) purchased, presented or acquired as *strīdhana* could entitle one, if at all, only to full membership in the assemblies;

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and in no case will quarter, half or three-quarter membership be recognized; (3) that those who purchase shares must elect only such men to represent their shares on the assembly, as have critically studied a whole Veda with its *pariśiṣṭas*; (4) that those who do not possess full membership as laid down by rule (2), cannot stand on any committee (*vāriyam*) for the management of village affairs; (5) that those who satisfy the prescribed conditions should in no case persistently oppose (in the proceedings of the assembly) by saying “nay, nay” to every proposal brought up before the assembly and (6) that those who do this together with their supporters will pay a fine of five *kāśus* on each item (in which they so behaved) and still continue to submit to the same rules.’ It is a pity that twenty years after the discovery of this inscription, its text should not be available for scholars. But even the abstract given above contains enough to show the importance of the record. Other inscriptions which have been reviewed here tell us generally of the existence of village assemblies and of their carrying on their work through committees. And this Mānūr record may be taken perhaps as giving a type of the constitutions of village assemblies in this period in the south of the Pāndya country. Membership in the assembly was regulated by qualifications of property and learning very much as in the well-known inscriptions from Uttiramallūr (Chingleput) of the early tenth century A.D.

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There seems to have been no election to the assembly, but all important property interests were represented on it. This seems to have made the *sabha* a rather unwieldy body in which the transaction of business with reasonable despatch could only be secured by somewhat drastic rules against organized obstruction on the part of sections of the members. We learn nothing however as to the method of appointing the committee (*vāriyam*) of the assembly which formed the executive of the assembly, each in its respective sphere of work.

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¹ Mr. Venkayya seems to have missed the full significance of these words. The schedule of expenses that is given in the rest of the inscription is very interesting as it gives full details for a total expenditure of exactly 580 kalams and contains information as to the prevailing ratio of exchange among several articles of common consumption. See *E. I.*, vol. ix, pp. 92-3.

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¹ Mr. Venkayya, A.S.I., 1903-4, p. 276, makes பாதமூலத்தோமும் the servants of the Pati. I have followed the analogy of the Ambāsamudram inscription in my rendering, as there seems to be no point in mentioning the servants of the Pati as trustees after mentioning the Pati himself as one.

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² The conclusion is the result of a simple calculation from the data given by this and the Ambāsamudram record. Two nāḷis of ghī were to be given every day for four lamps to be maintained from the interest (பொலி) on 120 kaḷanjus (Trichi. inscr.); the Ambāsamudram records give the information 1 nāḷi of ghī = 30 nāḷis of paddy. This will give 60 nāḷis of paddy every day as the cost of the service; this makes 2/3 of a kalam (=15 kuruṇis = 90 nāḷis, Venkayya in E. I.) per day or roughly 240 kalams per year of 360 days, which is just the interest on 120 kaḷanjus (kāśus) at the prevailing rate of 2 kalams per annum per kāśu (Kaḷanju). This conclusion, it must be noted, casts a doubt on Venkayya's rendering of பாடிக்கல்லால் in the Trichinopoly record into ‘weighed by the standard of the district’. If the calculation made in this note is accepted, it will be proof that the same standards prevailed all over the Pāndya country at the time, which is not unlikely, in such matters as the weight of the standard coin and the interest on perpetual royal endowments to temples.

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¹ In the paragraph *A. R. E.*, 1913 (part ii, para. 23) containing this summary it seems to me that the epigraphist combines sources in order to make a picture of village administration which is, in essence, not a faithful reflection of our sources.

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We may now turn to a brief review of the state of religious belief in the period of our study. We have seen that in the early centuries of the Christian era, in the *Śangam* age, Buddhism, Jainism and Brahminism flourished in the Tamil land. The central feature of the development that followed in the succeeding centuries was the determined effort made by the exponents of Brahminism in its various forms to suppress the heretical sects of Buddhism and Jainism, an effort which was apparently marked by greater success against the Buddhists than against the Jains. Yuan Chwang writing in the middle of the seventh century A.D. deplores the decay of Buddhism in South India and envies the prosperity of the Jains. We can also trace many survivals of Jainism to a comparatively late age. At Ērvāḍi in the Tinnevelly district there was discovered a squatting Jaina figure and engraved below it is a small inscription, in Vaṭṭeḻuttu characters of about the eighth century A.D., which reads ‘Work of Ajjaṇandi’. This Jaina teacher appears to be referred to in the Jīvakacintāmaṇi also. Another inscription in the same place of about the same period records a grant of land to a Jaina temple.¹ Two inscriptions of Māraṇjaḍayan from the Ramnad district (430 and 431 of 1914) make mention of Tirukkāṭṭāmpaḷḷi which seems to have been a Jaina temple at Kuraṇḍai, an important Jaina centre in Veṇbunāḍu.² And the well-known Aivarmalai record of A.D. 870 records the renewal of the images of Pārśva-Bhaṭārar and the Yakṣis at Tiruvayirai by one Śāntivīraguravar, the pupil of Guṇavīrakkuravadiigal. And even Rājasimha II, the last of the Pāṇḍya rulers of this age, is said to have endowed, among others, several Jaina temples (எண்ணிறந்த பள்ளிச் சந்தங்களும்). It is clear from such facts that Jainism was not overwhelmed so completely as Buddhism by the rising tide of Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism in the land.

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¹ See A. R. E. 1916, part ii, para. 2.

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² A. R. E. 1915, part ii, para. 29.

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A detailed study of the various movements of this heroic age of religion in South India is outside the scope of this history. But some attention must be given to that part of the legendary accounts of the age which centres round Madura and the Pāndya country, and an attempt made to estimate the influence of the revival of Hinduism on the Pāndya country. We have seen some reason to think that Mānikkavāśagar, the great antagonist of Buddhism, was among the earliest of the great saints of this age. It is very likely that the period of his ministry was sometime before the restoration of the Pāndya rule under Kadungōn. This fervid devotee of Śiva had his birth in the Pāndya country, and started in life as a high officer of the Pāndya king; the scene of his chief triumphs against the Buddhists was Chidambaram, and there is some reason to think that the Pāndyan power extended to Chidambaram in his day. It is remarkable that the sage ends his contest with the Buddhists by admitting the discomfited opponents into the fold of Śaivism and that as Pope has observed ‘no mention is made of the use of any violent measures’. The greatest achievement of the sage,—this is true also of many others like him in this period—was the propagation of his faith by means of fervid popular songs which were unique in their lyrical beauty and the simplicity and directness of their appeal to the human heart. The name of Tirugnānasambandar, whom Śaivites regard as the greatest of Śaiva saints of this age, is connected with the story of a miraculous cure worked on a Pāndya king who may be identified, as we have seen, with Arikēsari Parānkuśa, who ruled in the second half of the seventh century A.D. Later legend makes the occasion a turning point in the history of orthodox Śaivism in the Pāndya country. The king was a Jain and the whole land was taking to the heretical doctrine after him; and it was only the devotion of the queen, who was a Chola princess, and the minister Kulaccirai that saved the situation by sending word to the great saint of Shiyāli begging him to come and reclaim the land by combating the Jains and putting an end to their influence over the king. It is needless to narrate the story of what followed, as it is sufficiently known. But it must be stated that there is little ground for the view that many Jains were put to a cruel death on the occasion. The Tamil Purāṇas indeed say that 8,000 Jains were impaled on stakes; but this seems apocryphal. At any rate the saint Sambanda does not seem to be connected with the employment of violent measures and what troubles the Jains experienced seem to have been at the hands of the secular power.¹ Indeed, at the end of the contest with the Śaiva saint, we learn that the Jains still continued defiant, and unlike the Buddhist opponents of Māṇikkavāśagar at Chidambaram, these Jains of Madura refused to embrace the faith of their victorious opponent when he invited them to do so.

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¹ See *verses* 853 and 854 of Gnānasambanda’s life in the *Periyapurāṇam* and *verses* 43 and 45 in the 38th *Tiruvilaiyādal* in Perumbarrappuliyūr Nambi.

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The contest against the heretical sects was carried on by the Vaiṣṇava Ālvārs as much as by the Śaiva Nāyanārs. But the history of the Ālvārs is even more obscure than that of the Nāyanārs and it is not possible to say much of any of them with confidence. We have noted before the attempt to fix the age of Madhurakavi and his Guru Nammālvār by identifying Madhurakavi-ālvār with the minister Mārangāri who is also called Madhurakavi in the Ānamalai inscription. It has also been supposed that Nammālvār (Kāri Māran) was the son of the minister and that ‘he may have given his own father’s surname Madhurakavi to his disciple as a dāsyanāma.¹ But, however plausible such assumptions may be, they are still only assumptions which await some tangible proof. The suggestion has been made that another Vaisnava saint, Periyālvār, was the contemporary of Jatila Parāntaka I.² Periyālvār does refer to a Pāndya king Nedumāran in the lines. ‘(கொ)ன்னவில் கூர்வேற்கோன் நெடுமாறன் தென் கூடற்கோன் தென்னன் கொண்டாடும் தென்றிருமாலிருஞ் சோலையே’. All that we can infer is that, if this Nedumāran is the same as the contemporary of Gnānasambandar, this Alvar may also be assigned to their age and likewise his daughter Andāl. It seems more likely however that the reference is to Śrī Māra Śrīvallabha. But this inference can only be tentative, and in any case there is no reason to assign Periyālvār to the times of Jatila Parāntaka. But the references in Periyālvār to the Pāndyas, and the instances we have already noticed of the erection of two temples to Visnu in the time of Parāntaka Nedunjadayan furnish sufficient evidence of the influence of Vaisnavism in the Pāndya country in this period. The epigraphs of the age furnish numerous instances of private benefactions to temples for the burning of lamps, the maintenance of gardens, etc., and one of these records from Tirupputtūr (136 of 1908) mentions the gift of ten dīnāras (kāśu) by a Brahmin lady for the burning of a lamp.

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¹ Gopinatha Rao, Śrī Vaisnavas, p. 19.

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² See Pandit M. Raghava Aiyangār in Sen Tamil, vol. vi, pp. 52-3. He is able to prove that Jatila was a worshipper of Visnu; but this is admitted. But (1) he misinterprets the phrase குருசரிதங் கொண்டாடி in the Madras Museum plates by ignoring the phrase மனுசரிதமார்க்கத்தினால் which immediately precedes it; the word குரு means here, surely, not spiritual preceptor (Pandit's meaning), but the king's ancestors who preceded him on the throne; (2) the pandit does not say how Nedumāran can be identified with Nedunjadayan. See Also Gopinatha Rao, History of Srivaisnavas, pp. 5 and 23 and A.R.E., 1927, part ii, para 36.

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