The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c14.25

c14.25

Now, there is little reason to doubt that the facts so recorded in Sundara's inscriptions are substantially true; and the language of every inscription makes it a paean of triumph. For the first time after several centuries of subjection to Chola rule, followed by a period of civil war and abject dependence on Chola support, Sundara Pāndya apparently in the prime of life had successfully carried fire and sword into the heart of the Chola country and what was more, had, by an act of political good sense in restoring the Chola country to its vanquished ruler, raised himself and his country in the estimation of his contemporaries. The ground had been prepared in the days of Kulaśēkhara, but so long as Kulōttunga III lived, the memory of the support Vikrama Pāndya had had at his hands against Vīra survived, and Kulōttunga himself was a more capable ruler than his ill-starred successor Rājarāja III. Rājarāja III and Sundara Pāndya well-known Tiruvēndipuram inscription in the sixteenth year of Rāja Rāja (A.D. 1231-32), from which we learn that the Chola emperor, who had been imprisoned by his rebellious feudatory Kōpperunjinga, was released and restored to power, by the intervention of two generals of Vīra Narasimha, in order to maintain his reputation of being the establisher of the Chola country. Lastly, we have the record of Sundara Pāndya in his twentieth year (A.D. 1235-6) which gives the story of another defeat and dethronement of Rāja Rāja. These are the facts relevant to an understanding of the history of the period, and the chronology indicated above seems to be rather well established.