The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c15.12

c15.12

One general remark may be made. The presence of several contemporary rulers may be a sign of strength in the empire as in the case of the Chola It has been possible to calculate within remarkably narrow limits the date of the accession to the throne of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāndya and to fix it between April 20 and 28, A.D. 1251.¹ His records can be distinguished easily by the attribute ‘*Emmand-alamum-koṇḍaruḷiya*’ which belongs only to him among the Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāndyas. Several of his records also start with the characteristic string of surnames in Sanskrit commencing with *Samasta-jagaḍā dhāra*. More rarely there is a long historical introduction in Tamil beginning *Pūmalar Valar Tikaḷ*. Besides a long Sanskrit stone inscription in the Śrīrangam temple, there are several stanzas in Sanskrit celebrating the king’s martial prowess and political power and recording his splendid gifts to various temples in Tinnevelly, Chidambaram, Tiruppuṭkuḷi, Kāñchīpuram and other places. But all the same, it is not possible to give a connected chronological narrative of the transactions of the emperor’s reign from the numerous records of his time as so few of them are dated. The Sanskrit inscriptions are all of them in verse and yield no dates whatever. Of the Tamil records, several contain astronomical particulars and generally bear regnal years, but most of these relate to private transactions or record religious gifts without containing any references to the political occurrences of the reign. Almost the only exception among