The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c20.6.1

c20.6.1

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.