The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c14.46

c14.46

The latest records of Māravarman Sundara Pāndya are dated in his twenty-third year¹ and his reign must be taken to have come to a close some time in A.D. 1238–1239. The immediate successor or the heir-apparent in the last years of Māravarman Sundara Pāndya was a Jatāvarman Kulaśēkhara who seems to have had a very short reign, his accession being somewhere in June A.D. 1238.² Sewell remarked in 1915 that better proof was required than was then forthcoming for placing this king between the two Māravarman Sundara Pāndyas of this period. A record from Tiruttangāl (No. 548 of 1922) furnishes such proof. This inscription,³ dated in the second year of Jatāvarman Kulaśēkhara refers to the gift of land in Anaiyūr by Śōlan Uyyaninrāduvān *alias* Gurukulattarayan for the Sundara Pāndyan Sandi instituted by him in honour of Māravarman Sundara Pāndya (acc. A.D. 1216). But we do not hear anything more of this Jatāvarman Kulaśēkhara and so far no records that could be positively ascribed to him are known to mention a regnal year later than the second. We may perhaps suppose that Kulaśēkhara died in the life-time of Māravarman Sundara Pāndya and that before his death, he chose as heir-apparent another Māravarman Sundara Pāndya whose accession has been placed between July 13 and December 7, A.D. 1238.¹ To the reign of this Māravarman Sundara Pāndya we may therefore turn.