The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11.21

c11.21

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.