The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c18.s1.14

c18.s1.14

These defeats at the hands of foreign invaders following so quickly upon one another must have shaken the hold of the Pāndya rulers on the territories they subjugated and held during the thirteenth century outside the Pāndya country proper. It is not possible to trace fully the steps by which this disintegration was brought about, but we see, about this time, signs of the growing feeling among the feudatories of the kingdom that they might ignore the central power with impunity. One of the Śāmbuvarāyas of North Arcot, who were at first subject to the Cholas and later became the dependants of the Pāndya rulers, Kulaśēkhara Śāmbuvarāya, set up as an independent ruler at this time and began to date his inscriptions in his own regnal years. This Śāmbuvarāya apparently acknowledged the authority of Vīra Pāndya till the twenty-second year of his reign, privation that must have been the lot of the common people at this time. The loss in wealth was real. The country was drained of its treasure by the trade of the Arabs from across the sea and the plunder of the armies of the Sultans of Delhi. Wassaf tells us that a certain ‘eminent prince’ Takiuddin occupied high positions of power and prestige in the administration of the country under the Sundara Pāndya, who died about A.D. 1292, and for sometime afterwards.¹ Barni laments the rapacity and villainy of Khusru Khan which did not spare even a Muhammadan merchant Taki Khan whose great wealth was taken from him by force, himself being afterwards put to death.² The desecration of temples by the invading hosts and the horror with which their acts of vandalism filled the minds of the people who had till then been strangers to such sights, are occasionally evidenced by the inscriptions. Two of these come from Tirupputtūr (Ramnad district)³ and are dated in the forty-fourth and forty-sixth years of Jatāvarman Vīra Pāndya, that is, about A.D. 1339-41. These records give an account of the reconsecration of a Śiva temple and the gratitude of the villagers to the magnate who undertook the task and completed it. ‘The temple of Tiruttaḷiyāṇḍa-Nāyaṇār at Tirupputtūr is stated to have been occupied by the encamped Muhammadans (Tulukkar), “whose time it was”, and to have been ruined. In consequence of this the inhabitants of Tirupputtūr became unsettled. At this juncture a certain Viśayālayadēvar of Kūraikkuḍi (Śūraikkuḍi?), surnamed Avaiyan Periyanāyaṇār, reconsecrated the temple and saved the people apparently from an imminent moral and religious degradation. The villagers of Tirupputtūr, of their free will, agreed among themselves to show their gratitude to Viśayālayadēva by assigning to him a specified quantity of corn from the harvest reaped by each individual, and to confer on him certain privileges in the temple of Tiruttāḷiyāṇḍa-Nāyaṉār.’