The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11.4

c11.4

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.