The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c15.52

c15.52

claims to have killed Gaṇḍagōpāla, occupied Kāñchīpuram, defeated Gaṇapati the Kākatīya king, and performed a *Vīrābhiṣeka* in Nellore. This is confirmed by some inscriptions (Nos. 332, 340 and 361 of 1913) from Chidambaram which contain Tamil verses stating that Sundara Pāndya ‘inflicted a severe defeat on the Telungas at Muḍugūr, slaughtering them and their allies, the Aryas, right up to the bank of the Pērāru and driving the Bāna chief into the forest.’¹ All these references are apparently to various occurrences in the course of a single campaign against the ‘northern kings’, and if that be so, the reference to Gaṇapati would mean that the campaign was undertaken some time before A.D. 1260. The enemy against whom the campaign was primarily directed was Gaṇḍagōpāla, a Telugu-Choḍa ruler who was in possession of Nellore and Kāñchīpuram. The Bāna chieftain and the Kākatīya king were perhaps the allies of Gaṇḍagōpāla whom Sundara Pāndya did not pursue after they were repulsed in battle. Gaṇḍagōpāla was however ‘sent to the other world’, as an inscription from Chidambaram records, and his territory was annexed to the Pāndya empire and entrusted to his brothers who were apparently to rule as feudatories of the Pāndya sovereign.²