The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c20.15

c20.15

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.