The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c18.s1.26

c18.s1.26

These defeats at the hands of foreign invaders following so quickly upon one another must have shaken the hold of the Pāṇḍya rulers on the territories they subjugated and held during the thirteenth century outside the Pāṇḍya 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 Pāṇḍya 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 Pāṇḍya till the twenty-second year of his reign, that is, till about A.D. 1317-18 and subsequently declared himself independent. We are not, however, in a position to fix the exact date from which he counted his regnal years and began to issue orders in his own name showing the attainment of an independent or quasi-independent status by him.¹ It may be mentioned in passing that another feudatory of the Pāndya rulers of this period was Śēmāpiḷḷai, the son of Rājēndra III and almost the last representative of the Chola line. His inscriptions come largely from the region of the modern Pudukottah state.²