The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c13.4

c13.4

² See *A.R.E.*, 1909, part ii, para 23 end. The report for 1917 finds confirmation of the age of Śrīvallabha in 331 of 1916 from Tiruvālīśvaram in which a certain Umai-Ammai of about the end of the tenth century is mentioned. Again, No. 21 of 1927 in the tenth year of this king refers to the thirty-first year of Kulōttunga Chola who took Kollam. It must be noted however that the whole question is far from satisfactorily settled. There is a strange inconsistency in the positions taken up in the epigraphical reports about this king. We learn (1909) that ‘he was perhaps the immediate predecessor of Jaṭāvarman Kulaśēkhara of the earlier Tiruppūvaṇam grant’ at the beginning of a paragraph which ends with the statement that he was of the age of Kulōttunga I and was among the Pāṇḍya sovereigns overthrown by him. Either of these conclusions must be wrong as Kulōttunga I came to the throne about A.D. 1070 and conquered the Pāṇḍyas before A.D. 1085 (*S.I.I.*, vol. ii, No. 58) and Kulaśēkhara of the Tiruppūvaṇam grant came to the throne in A.D. 1190 (Kielhorn *E.I.*, vol. vi). The report for 1917 leans to Kulōttunga’s time but we hear a different story in the report for 1923 which again makes him the predecessor of Jaṭ. Kulaśēkhara (para 46, part i i). The reports for 1918 and 1927 his accession is placed in A.D. 1291. The only fact which seems to help us in deciding this is noted in the text; the rest are impressions and may be ignored for the present. See also K. V. S. Aiyar, *Ancient Dekhan*, pp. 162-3 for a discussion of the matter of this note *re.* Jaṭ. Śrīvallabha.