The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c13.10

c13.10

What does the reference in these records to the 'five Pāṇḍyas' (பஞ்சவர் ஐவரும், *Pāṇḍyān Panca*) indicate? Mr. L. D. Swamikkannu Pillai once thought that the simultaneous rule of five Pāṇḍyas was a fact established by tradition as well as by the statements of contemporary historians,¹ and proceeded to arrange the Pāṇḍya kings of the thirteenth century known to epigraphy on this basis. Mr. Robert Sewell subjected this position to a searching criticism² and concluded 'that we must hold the evidence to be overwhelmingly in favour of a single monarchy, and that the theory of a co-regency of five kings may be altogether set aside.' There is no doubt that on this general question of the regular and successive rule of five Pāṇḍyan kings through several generations the position of Mr. Sewell is the sounder of the two, and that Mr. Pillai seems on the whole to have had an exaggerated view of the evidence on his side, and that he was misled by a system of chronology, based exclusively on dubious astronomical data contained in the stone inscriptions of the period.