The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c12.34

c12.34

Spotless fame of the Pāndya king. Having placed there his own son, the glorious Chola-Pāndya, for the protection of his (i.e. the Pāndya's country), the light of the solar race started for the conquest of the western region.' We have no means of knowing who the Pāndya king was, whether he was Śrīvallabha or a successor of his, that was forced to seek refuge in the mountain of Agastya. The appointment of the king's son, the glorious Chola-Pāndya, as viceroy of the Pāndya country is confirmed by an inscription (363 of 1917) of the tenth year of Rājendra, which also 'furnishes the very interesting information that Rājendra Chola I constructed at Madura a huge palace (Māligai) by whose weight even the earth became unsteady'; this inscription also implies that the campaign undertaken by Rājendra in the south extended up to Śālai (Kāndalūr Śālai) whose destruction is mentioned.¹ For a period of about half a century, after this campaign of Rājendra in the Pāndya country, which may be placed about A.D. 1020, the administration of this part of the Chola empire seems to have been regularly vested in a prince of the Chola royal family who bore the title Chola-Pāndya. Rājendra's son who figures in the inscriptions of this period as Jatāvarman Sundara Chola-Pāndya was the first of these Chola-Pāndya viceroys, and he may have continued in this capacity for some years in the beginning of the reign of the Chola emperor Rājādhirāja I who succeeded Rājendra.² It is possible that the Chola-Pāndya viceroys had some control over the Chera country also. The inscriptions of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Chola-Pāndya are found all over Madura and Tinnevelly and portions of Pudukkottah and S. Travancore. Some inscriptions (Nos. 111, 113 and 114 of 1905) of the sixteenth year of this prince from Mannārkōvil near Ambāsamudram mention the Chera kings Rāja Rāja and Rājasimha and another record from the same place (No. 112 of 1905) dated in the twenty-fourth year of Rājēndra himself says that Rājasimha built in Mannārkōvil the Viṣṇu temple called Rajēndracholaviṇṇagar.¹ Besides Jaṭāvarman Sundara Chola-Pāndya, two other Chola princes are known from Chola inscriptions to have been appointed to the viceroyalty of the Pāndyan kingdom. In the historical introductions of Rājēndradēva (c. A.D. 1052-1064), he is stated to have conferred on one of his younger brothers, the victorious Mummaḍi Solaṇ, the title Chola-Pāndyan.² Again some years later Vīrarājēndra I conferred on his son Gangaikoṇḍachola the Pāṇḍimaṇḍalam and the title Chola-Pāndya.³ It is not possible to identify these princes in the Chola-Pāndya records very clearly; and it is not unlikely there were two or three princes similarly deputed to rule the Pāndyan kingdom. But this system does not seem to have been continued after the accession of Kulōttunga I about A.D. 1070.⁴