The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c14.4

c14.4

The interpretation of the epigraphs of the period however presents numerous difficulties which impose great limitations on any attempt to restore the history of the age. In the first place, there is no record, among the hundreds of inscriptions, which gives us any clue to the genealogy of the rulers of this age. Even the few copper-plates we possess, like the Tiruppūvanam plates, differ, in this respect, totally from similar documents of the Pāndyas of the earlier or later times, and fail to record genealogy. This is perhaps the most serious obstacle in our way, which is not altogether removed by the few contemporary references to the Pāndyas in the records of other ruling families and the many instances of astronomical details recorded in the Pāndya inscriptions themselves. These astronomical details yield different results in the hands of different scholars, and often in the hands of the same scholar at different times. New kings have been postulated and given up in a manner that has tended to make the chronology of the age a game of ninepins. As one wades through the results of Kielhorn, Jacobi, Swamikkannu Pillai and Sewell, one almost gets the feeling that ignorance, at least of astronomy, is bliss and the general rule followed in our narrative is not to accept any conclusion that is not endorsed by more than one of these four earnest savants whose patient labours, especially those of Kielhorn, have alone rendered possible even such a provisional narrative as is given here. It must be noted also that palæography fails to furnish any material assistance in confirming or correcting the results of astronomy. Mr. Sewell remarks:¹ ‘Unless the number of the solar day of the month is stated, and it is not as a rule stated, all the ordinary details of a Chola or Pāndya date will be found often to correspond with about three different days in a century’; and palæography cannot possibly decide among them.² And even the texts of most of these records are yet unpublished. It is obvious that in the present state of our knowledge we shall have to leave on one side all the records which cannot with confidence be assigned to one or another of the kings whose existence has been proved beyond possibility of doubt. Again no attempt can be made to fix the dynastic relations among the rulers of the age. But this is not all. There is the possibility, nay the great probability, that several princes ruled at the same time over different parts of the empire and these also engraved inscriptions in full or quasi-regal style. We have already seen reason to reject the theory of the regular co-regency of ‘Five Pāndya Rulers’ and to hold that although several princes of the royal family might have ruled in different parts of the kingdom simultaneously, there was a regular succession of kings who ruled in their own right, the others ruling more or less in a subordinate capacity. There is little reason to doubt that the main line of reigning kings is that restored by Kielhorn’s calculations and modified in some respects by his successors.