The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c20: Chapter XVI. The Fourteenth Century and Later. Decline and End

The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c20

Language: English

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Chapter XVI. The Fourteenth Century and Later. Decline and End

JAṬĀVARMAN VĪRA PĀNDYA continued to rule for several years after the first Muhammadan invasion of the Pāndya country and, as has been seen, late records of his reign of about A.D. 1340 show evidence of the recovery of the land from the ravages of the invaders. It is, however, difficult to trace in any detail the course of events in the Pāndyan kingdom in the fourteenth century. The chronicles relating to the period narrate wild and fanciful stories which have sometimes been accepted as history, but are by no means reconcilable with the evidence furnished by the epigraphs. The general outline of the story is clear. The establishment of the Muhammadan power in Madura about A.D. 1330 must have deprived the Pāndyan rulers, Jaṭāvarman Vīra Pāndya and his co-regents of their hold on their capital. The evidence from epigraphs, however, shows clearly that even the loss of Madura did not mean the immediate disappearance of the power of the Pāndyas from the districts of Madura, Ramnad and Tanjore. Till about the middle of the century or even a little later, the Pāndyan rulers appear to have held sway over parts of these districts.

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It is not within the scope of this work to describe in any detail the story of the Sultanate of Madura and the barbarous misdeeds that disgraced the short period of its precarious existence. The subjects of the Sultans seem never to have reconciled themselves to the rule of the Turuṣkas (Tuḷukkar) as they were called, and the Hindu rulers of the neighbouring kingdoms, especially the Hoysalas of Dvārasamudra, made repeated efforts to suppress the Sultanate. It is not possible to say what part the Pāndya rulers played in these early struggles with the newly established power of the Sultans, but it is perhaps of some significance that the reconsecration of the Śiva temple at Tirupputtūr about A.D. 1340 coincides, in point of time, with the last great struggle of Vīra Ballāla III against the Sultans which ended so disastrously for the Hoysala two years later in the battle of Kaṇṇanūr.¹ It seems probable that the Pāndya rulers were carrying on the resistance against the Sultans in the Madura country, while the Hoysala ruler attacked Kaṇṇanūr-Koppam which commanded the road to Madura and was held by the Madura Sultans.

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¹ See Dr. S. K. Aiyangar, *South India and Her Muhammadan Invaders*, pp. 183-4.

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The failure of the Hoysalas in the war against the Madura Sultanate secured for it a respite of a little over two decades. During this period the country seems to have suffered from the effects of terrible misrule, but the Pāndyan rulers who had lost all capacity for resistance were permitted to lead an obscure and unhonoured existence. It must be noticed, however, that their inscriptions are found in the districts of Ramnad, Madura, Tanjore and South Arcot and the Pudukottah state almost up to A.D. 1370.² The state of the country under its Muhammadan rulers can be inferred from the observations of the African traveller, Ibn Batuta, who spent some time in the Sultan's court in the early years of the Sultanate. It also forms the subject of a poetic description in the *Madhurāvijayam* of Gaṅgā Dēvī.¹ The *Madhurāvijayam* is an almost contemporary poem in the conventional epic style in Sanskrit dealing with the conquest of the Madura Sultanate by Kumāra Kampana alias Vīrakamparāya. It is a composition of considerable literary merit by the wife of Kampana, and even in its present mutilated condition, the poem throws much welcome light on the political conditions of the time.

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We learn from the poem that some time after Kampana conquered the Śāmbuvarāya of the Rājagambhīrarājya and established his rule over Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam (Tundīra) with his capital at Marakatanagarī (another name for Kāñchī?), a mysterious lady appeared before Kamparāya and narrated to him in detail the wicked deeds of the Yavanas (Muham-madans) in the southern country. She said: ‘The temples in the land have fallen into neglect as worship in them has been stopped. Within their walls the frightful howls of jackals have taken the place of the sweet reverberations of the *mridanga*. Like the Turushkas who know no limits, the Kāvēri has forgotten her ancient boundaries and brings frequent destruction with her floods. The sweet odour of the sacrificial smoke and the chant of the Vedas have deserted the villages (*agrahāras*) which are now filled with the foul smell of roasted flesh and the fierce noises of the ruffianly Turushkas. The suburban gardens of Madura present a most painful sight; many of their beautiful cocoanut palms have been cut down; and on every side are seen rows of stakes from which swing strings of human skulls strung together. The Tāmraparṇī is flowing red with the blood of slaughtered cows. The Veda is forgotten and justice has gone into hiding;

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there is not left any trace of virtue or nobility in the land and despair is writ large on the faces of the unfortunate Drāvidas.' At the end of her speech, the lady produced a mighty sword, the symbol of Pāndya sovereignty and spoke again: 'This sword, O! King!, was wrought of yore by Viśvakarma from the essences of all the heavenly instruments of war for the use of Lord Śiva in his fight against the Asuras. He then gave it to the Pāndyan king who pleased him by his penances, and with its aid successive rulers of his dynasty held unrivalled sway for a long time. And now finding that, by dint of fate, the kings of the Pāndya line have lost their prowess, (the sage) Agastya has despatched this sword to be placed in your strong hands.' The rest of the speech is an exhortation and a prophecy foretelling Kampana's successes in the south. This account in the *Madhurāvijayam* is valuable in two respects. It gives a fairly reliable account from the Hindu point of view of the state of feeling in the country towards its Muhammadan rulers, and in a matter like this, contemporary literary evidence is of inestimable value in supplementing the evidence from epigraphs. What is equally valuable to the student of Pāndyan history is the account of the transference of the ancient sword from the Pāndyan kings to Kampana. Agastya, the custodian of Tamil culture, is said to have made the transfer, as the Pāndyan line did not any more produce kings worth the name.

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The meaning behind the poetic conception is clear. The failure of the Pāndyan kings to recover Madura is the historic justification for Kampana's conquest of the Madura country; moreover, in the Pāndyan kingdom, the task of the Vijayanagar rulers was the continuance of the work of the ancient rulers of the land.

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² Nos. 362 of 1904; 527 of 1926; 78 of 1918; 100 of 1897; 395 of 1906 and others; also Nos. 455-8 of the Pudukottah list and others.

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¹ Edited by Pandits Harihara Sastri and Srinivasa Sastri (Trivandram, 1916) with an Introduction by Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao. Canto viii, pp. 69 ff.

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years and therefore he may be taken to have ruled up to about A.D. 1380.¹ Another ruler who came to power about the same time as the one last-mentioned was Māravarman Parākrama Pāṇḍya (A.D. 1335-52) whose records² are found in the districts of Ramnad, Tanjore, S. Arcot and Chingleput. A Jaṭāvarman Parākrama Pāṇḍya (acc. A.D. 1357) was in the enjoyment of some power in the district of Ramnad and the Pudukottah state for at least twenty-three years.³ Yet another Parākrama is credited with the renovation of the central shrine and the *maṇḍapas* of the temple at Kuttālam, near Tenkāśi in the Tinnevelly district, about A.D. 1387 in the twentieth year of his reign.⁴ And it seems quite possible that there was a fifth Parākrama Pāṇḍya of whom nothing more can be stated than that his thirty-first regnal year was about Saka 1337 (No. 203 of 1895) pointing to some time about A.D. 1384 as the date of his accession. Lastly, we find evidence of the rule, from A.D. 1395-1396, of a Jaṭāvarman Kulaśēkhara⁵ who claims to have rebuilt the temple at Ilanji (a village near Tenkāśi) and founded a new Brahmin village in his fourteenth and sixteenth regnal years respectively. The inscriptions of the three rulers last mentioned are not found outside the Tinnevelly district.

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¹ Nos. 453 and 454 of Pudukottah list and 386 of 1913 and other records. *Indian Ephemeris*, vol. i, part ii, pp. 110-1.

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² *E.I.*, vol. ix, p. 228, and vol. vii, p. 11. *A.R.E.*, 1913, part ii, para 46; 1918, part ii, para 53 and 1927, part ii, para 39. Inscription No. 35 of 1913 is a very interesting record which belongs apparently to an earlier ruler. *A.R.E.*, 1913, part ii, para 47 seems to contradict the paragraph just preceding it. The record is treated here as relating to the twelfth, not the fourteenth century.

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³ *E.I.*, vol. ix, pp. 225-8. No. 63 of 1924.

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⁴ No. 408 of 1917 and *A.R.E.*, 1918, part ii, para 54.

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⁵ *A.R.E.*, 1912, part ii, para 42; 1918, part ii, para 54.

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The evidence from epigraphs thus shows that, some time in the second half of the fourteenth century A.D., the Pāṇdyas more or less completely lost their hold on the Madura country and found themselves restricted to their more southern possessions in the Tinnevelly district. The change must have occurred about the time of Kampana's final conquest of Madura or soon afterwards. The Vijayanagar viceroy seems to have been assisted in his task by the Bāṇarāya chieftains and these quondam feudatories of the Pāṇdya kings doubtless had an interest in thus restricting the range of Pāṇdya power.¹ In any case, the Pāṇdya kings gained no material advantage from Kampana's wars against the Madura Sultans and the establishment of the power of Vijayanagar in Madura proved to be the beginning of the end of Pāṇdyan rule in the city where, except for relatively short intervals, the Pāṇdyas had held sway from the earliest times to the fourteenth century.

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¹ Dr. S.K. Aiyangar at p. 5 of the Nāyaks of Madura by Mr. R. Satyanatha Aiyar seems to date the commencement of the viceroyalty of Madura rather too early. Rev. Heras (op. cit., pp. 107-8) reproduces apocryphal tales from the chronicles relating to the illegitimate scions of the Pāṇdya family having been raised to power by the viceroy Lakkana. The names of the persons concerned show that the chronicles are giving a confused explanation of the rise of the Bāṇarāya chieftains into prominence under Vijayanagar.

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The history of the later Pāṇdyas of Tinnevelly² is the story of a more or less steady decline, punctuated by a few feeble attempts at revival, ending in the final disappearance of the dynasty towards the close of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century. The evidence of copper-plates renders it possible to construct a genealogy of the rulers of the period, though some of

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² The most important inscriptions of the later Pāṇdyas have been carefully edited by Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao (Trav. Arch. Series, vol. i, pp. 43-152; pp. 251-82) whose critical studies went a long way to introduce order into a part of the subject which was till then in the most chaotic condition. In my account I follow Mr. Rao in the main.

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Kampana’s conquest of Madura is partly described in the final fragments of *Madhurāvijayam* and attested by inscriptions and chronicles. His conquest of the kingdom of Rājagambhīra¹ is mentioned in an inscription of A.D. 1365, and a record in the thirty-first year of a certain Māravarman Vīra Pāndya from the Ramnad district (No. 64 of 1916) refers to the southern campaign of Kampana Udaiyār, and his destruction of the Tulukkan, followed by the establishment of orderly government throughout the country and the appointment of many chiefs (*Nāyakkanmār*) for the inspection and supervision of temples.² The date of this record is now generally taken to correspond to A.D. 1364. Three inscriptions at Tiruppullāni (Ramnad) are undoubtedly records of this Kampana and are dated in A.D. 1371 and 1374.³ On the other hand, the evidence of the coinage of the Sultans of Madura shows that their rule was continued in some manner till A.D. 1377-8.⁴ It seems a legitimate inference to make that, though the back of the Muhammadan power in the south had been broken by A.D. 1364 or even a little earlier, the last Sultans maintained a feeble struggle against the growing power of Vijayanagar till A.D. 1377-1378.⁵

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¹ A.R.E., 1899, para 57 discussing No. 18 of 1899 identifies Rājagambhīrarājya with the Pāndya country and is still followed by some writers, e.g. Heras, *Aravīdu Dynasty*, p. 104. The *Madhurāvijayam* leaves no doubt that it is a reference to the country of the Sāmbuvarāyas.

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² A.R.E., 1916, part ii, para 33.

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³ Rangachari, *Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency*, p. 1173, Nos. 124, 129 and 132. It may be noted here that the earliest mention of Kampana in the epigraphs of the Tamil districts is in Śaka 1285 (A.D. 1363) in 803-D at p. 1607 of Rangachari.

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⁴ J.R.A.S., 1909, p. 683.

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⁵ Dr. S. K. Aiyangar (*op. cit.*, pp. 182 ff) places the early campaigns of Kampana in the south in the interval between A.D. 1343 and A.D. 1355-1356 and connects them with the break in the coinage of the Sultans in this period. Rev. Heras (*op. cit.*, pp. 105-6) seems to underestimate the indications obtained from the Pāndyan records and is inclined to place the

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As has already been stated, we have little information as to the doings of the Pāṇḍyan rulers who were co-regents with Jaṭāvarman Vīra Pāṇḍya (acc. A.D. 1296) in the last years of his reign and those that came after. A Māravarman Kulaśēkhara, who seems to have also had the title ‘who conquered every country’ which was not more than an empty boast in his case, came to power in A.D. 1314 and would seem to have ruled at least up to A.D 1346.¹ His records are found in all the districts from Tinnevelly to Tanjore and an inscription from Shiyāli (366 of 1918) which refers to the eighteenth regnal year of an elder brother of the king, Sundara Pāṇḍya by name, may perhaps be ascribed to this Kulaśēkhara and in that case, the Sundara Pāṇḍya mentioned would be Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya (acc. A.D. 1303). A Jaṭāvarman Parākrama Pāṇḍya began his rule in A.D. 1315 and continued up to about A.D. 1347. His inscriptions are also found in the Tinnevelly, Madura, Ramnad and Tanjore districts and in the Pudukkottah state.² A Māravarman Vīra Pāṇḍya began to rule about A.D. 1334 and a record of his thirty-first year mentioning Kumāra Kampana’s campaigns has been already noticed. He seems to have continued in power for at least forty-seven

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¹ E.I., vol. ix, p. 228 and No. 362 of 1904. Among other records the following have been assigned to this king :-Nos. 595 and 639 of 1902; 119 of 1903; 419 of 1905; 125, 126 and 149 of 1907; 742 of 1909, etc.

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² I.A., vol. xliv, p. 254. Nos. 395 of 1906; 17 of 1894; 564 of 1921; 527 and 601 of 1926.

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campaign as late as A.D. 1377. There seems to be, however, no necessity to assume that Kampana did his work all in one expedition. Rev. Heras says, ‘After his conquests Prince Kumāra fixed his residence at Madura’, and mentions his restoration of the Pāṇḍya monarchs and the coronation of Sōma Sēkhara Pāṇḍya as ‘one of the most transcendental acts of Kumāra Kampana.’ I am unable to follow him in accepting the popular and confused chronicles in the Taylor MSS. as history. The traditional lists of Pāṇḍyan kings have been discussed already, and it has been shown that they furnish no guidance to the scientific historian.

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the connections are not yet as firmly established as one would wish. We have also evidence of the existence of some kings not mentioned in the copper-plates at all. Thus a Jaṭāvarman Vikrama Pāndya¹, who ruled from A.D. 1401 to 1422 and whose records are found in Kuttālam and in Tirupputtūr (Ramnad), among other places, is not mentioned in the copper-plates at all. Another king Parākrama *alias* Śrīvallabha² came to power about the same time and ruled for at least thirty-three years till A.D. 1434. Somewhat later instances are those of Māravarman Vīra Pāndya³ who ruled from A.D. 1443 to at least A.D. 1497 and whose records are found in the Pudukottah country; and a Māravarman Sundara Pāndya (A.D. 1531-1555) found in Kielhorn's list of Pāndya kings. These instances show that our knowledge of the state of the Pāndyan power under the Vijayanagar empire is still very fragmentary. It is significant that a few records of these later kings are found in Ramnad and Pudukottah, as this is some evidence that, to the last, these kings struggled to hold their own in the Madura country. It is not till about A.D. 1483 that the Bānarāya chieftains are found assuming titles like *Madhurā-purī-mahā-nāyakan*.⁴

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¹ *E.I.*, vol. ix, p. 228 and No. 124 of 1908.

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² *A.R.E.*, 1927, part ii, para 52.

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³ *E.I.*, vol. ix, p. 229 and Pudukottah List, Nos. 461-4.

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⁴ No. 672 of Pudukottah List.

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The genealogy of the later Pāndya rulers as it may be inferred from the copper-plate grants may now be given. The connections and identifications which are doubtful have been indicated as far as possible in the genealogical tree. The period of rule of each king and the asterism of his birth have also been entered so far as these can be ascertained:—

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| Jaṭ. Parākrama alias Vīra Pāṇḍya (Aviṭṭam) (A.D. 1473-1506) | Jaṭ. Parākrama alias Śrīvallabha (Tiruvādirai) (ruled for five years at least). |
| Abhirāma Parākrama. | Āhavarāma |
| | Jaṭ Śrīvallabha ‘ establisher of the Pāṇḍya Kingdom ’ (1534-1542 ?) |

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Arikēsari Parākrama who had also the titles Mānakavaca and Mānabhūṣaṇa is known to have ruled for forty years from A.D. 1422.¹ His inscriptions are numerous and some of them contain a long historical introduction in Tamil beginning Pū-miśai-vanitai. He claims to have won several victories over his enemies at various small places mostly in the Tinnevelly district and to have defeated the kings of Kēraḷa. If he is identical with the Pāṇḍya king of Madura vanquished by Narasa Nāyaka,² as perhaps he is, he must be taken to have been in possession of Madura for the best part of his reign, as the campaign of Narasa cannot be placed much earlier than the closing years of Parākrama's reign. He is also called Koṟkaivēndan, an indication that the sea-board of Tinnevelly was still in his control. But the greatest event of his reign was undoubtedly the building of the Viśvanātha temple at Tenkāśi. The erection of this fine structure was undertaken by the king after the Lord appeared before him in a dream and asked him to make a new habitation for him at Southern Kāśi as his original abode in the Kāśi of the north had become dilapidated. The construction took seventeen years and the towers (gōpurams) were still unfinished at the time of the king's death. The king's unbounded piety and his great love of art are evident from a number of verses in which he makes a moving appeal to his successors to safeguard and extend the temple he raised in his day. Arikēsari also made a large tank called Viśvanāthappērēri and erected maṇḍapas in Śiva temples in several places. Arikēsari Parākrama had two brothers Kulaśēkhara alias Śrīvallabha who completed the construction of the towers in the Tenkāśi temple and an Arikēśvara.¹ It is not clear what led to the succession passing to the nephews of Arikēsari; nor is it possible to determine whether these nephews are identical with Abhirāma Parākrama and Āhavarāma with whom the regular genealogy begins in the copper-plates.

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¹ E.I., vii, p. 17 and No. iv in Gopinatha Rao's Inscriptions of the Later Pāṇḍyas (Trav. Arch. Series, vol. i.)

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² Gopinatha Rao (op. cit., pp. 52-3) ; Heras, op. cit., pp. 108-9.

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¹ On the identity of Kulaśēkhara with Śrīvallabha see Gopinatha Rao op. cit., p. 263 and on Arikēśvara, A.R.E., 1918, part ii, para 57.

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It is needless to follow the transactions of these later monarchs in any great detail. Their inscriptions often open with the grandiloquent Sanskrit introduction beginning *Samastabhuvanaikavīra*, and to the last they continued to be called *Madhurāmahēndra* though they had ceased to have anything to do with Madura for well over a century. During the reign of Śrīvallabha (acc. A.D. 1534) even the little that was left to the Pāṇḍyas was sought to be taken away from them by the aggressive ruler of Travancore who, though he was also subject to Vijayanagar, had received in his court a rebel governor of the empire from Tanjore. These circumstances brought on the expedition to the south, in the early years of the reign of Achyutarāya, which resulted in the total defeat of the Travancore ruler, the restoration to the Pāṇḍya of the territory he had then lost and the marriage of a Pāṇḍyan princess to Achyutarāya.¹ Śrīvallabha, as a consequence, took to himself the title—'who restored the olden times' (*Iraṇḍakālameduṭṭa*). But nothing, not even the support of the Vijayanagar emperors, could restore the glory that once belonged to the rulers of this dynasty. Śrīvallabha and his successors had to console themselves, for what they had lost of political power, by seeking distinction in literature and philanthropy. And many of them, specially Ativīrarāma² and his cousin Varatungarāma really deserved the name *Sāhitya-sārvabhauma* both on account of their own literary compositions and by the encouragement they gave to the poets of the time. They also earned the gratitude of their subjects by the excavation of tanks, and the construction of temples and other foundations of public utility. These kings liked to call themselves *Dēvabrāhmaṇa-sthāpanācārya*, and when Robert de Nobili wanted that Śrīvallabha, the brother of Ativīrarāma, should listen to ‘the new doctrine preached by the Western *sannyāsi*’, he was put off on one ground or another.¹ The last of these kings, of whom we have authentic epigraphical evidence, performed a Vedic sacrifice in A.D. 1615 and assumed the titles *Sōmayāji* and *Dīkṣitar*. He seems to have lived up to A.D. 1652.² All these rulers were in subordinate alliance³ with the Nāyaks of Madura of the line of Viśvanātha Nāyaka. A few of their inscriptions⁴ refer to the emperors of Vijayanagar and their *birudas* as well; they also adopted the boar as an additional emblem of their family along with the carps and the hook. These are indications of their acknowledgment of the suzerainty of Vijayanagar. ‘There are two copper-plate records in the Kuttālanathasvāmin temple at Tirukkurrālam which belong to the reign (!) of one Alaganperumāl Śīvala-Varaguṇarāma Pāndya Kulaśēkharadēvar, “who brought back the past”. Both of them are dated Śaka 1675 (A.D. 1753). He bears all the *birudas* known to the previous Pāndyas.’

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¹ See Heras, *op. cit.*, pp. 113-17, for a detailed account of Achyuta's expedition.

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² Verse 19 of Pudukkottai plates has caused a difficulty about the duration of Ativīrarāma's reign, (*A.R.E.*, 1912, part ii, para 41), as this verse says that his brother Śrīvallabha was crowned after his death. But the reading *tridivam-gatē* on which the interpretation rests does not seem to be quite secure. It may be observed that Varatungarāma, the other donor in the plates, could not also have been ruling in Saka 1505, the date of the gift; in fact, lines 135-8 of the record show clearly that the regnal year quoted is that of Ativīrarāma himself. (*Contra* T. A. Gopinatha Rao, *op. cit.*, p. 57). Heras (*op. cit.*, pp. 285-6) explains the reference to the battle of Vallamprākāra in the plates. See also Satyanatha Aiyar, *Nayaks of Madura*, p. 103, *n.* 13. For Abhirāma Ativīrarāma, the son of Ativīrarāma Śrīvallabha, see *A.R.E.*, 1912, part ii, paras 40-1.

The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c20: Chapter XVI. The Fourteenth Century and Later. Decline and End

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Chapter XVI. The Fourteenth Century and Later. Decline and End

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