The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c16.34

c16.34

Wassaf says of Kulaśēkhara's reign that 'during that time neither any foreign enemy entered his country nor any severe malady confined him to bed'. 'The fortunate and happy sovereign' according to the same writer, 'enjoyed a highly prosperous life.' We have evidence from the inscriptions, however, of a short period of illness from which the king suffered and which appears to have had rather important consequences in the public administration of the country. In an epigraph from the Tanjore district (No. 46 of 1906)³ dated in the thirty-fourth year of the king, 'the country is said to have been in a state of confusion at the time and the people were in distress. This state of things seems to have been brought about by the king making over a portion of his dominions to his younger brothers. Kulaśēkhara apparently resumed the ceded territories subsequently. As a result of this step, the people, who had migrated to other provinces in the interval, returned to their native country’. Another inscription¹ dated about three years earlier in the thirty-first year which records a gift of land for the recovery of the king from some illness probably explains the circumstances which led to the events mentioned in the later inscription.