The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11.2.3

c11.2.3

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.