The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c8.27

c8.27

² It is rather strange that Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao (writing sometime in 1910-13) should ascribe this Ānamalai record to Kōccayan Raṇadhīra (No. 5 in our list), the grandson of Jayantavarman; this is simply impossible because the Māraṅgāri of the Ānamalai temple appears as the *ājñapti* of the Veḷvikuḍi grant in the fifth generation after Jayantavarman (Sēndan). After this start, he finds himself compelled (1) to ignore the Veḷvikuḍi grant in the learned discussion of the history of Mārañjaḍayan which follows, (2) to oppose on palæographical considerations Mr. Venkayya's suggestion that the Trivandrum Museum inscription which he edits must be ascribed to Varaguṇa Mahārāja, and (3) to enter upon an imaginary reconstruction of the Pāṇḍyas before Jayantavarman to arrive at the date of Gnānasambandar and his contemporary Neḍumāran in the middle of the seventh century A.D. (See *Trav. Arch. Series*, vol. i, pp. 153-7). But the only proper solution seems to be to identify Varaguṇa, Mārañjaḍayan and Parāntaka—a course which fits in with palæography and the place of Māraṅgāri in the king's reign as indicated by the Ānamalai and Veḷvikuḍi records.