The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c8.31

c8.31

The Vēlvikkudi grant only says (ll. 39-40), ‘Then a Kali king named Kalabhran took possession of the extensive earth driving away numberless great kings (adhirājas)’ and tells us no more about it, although it refers to the Kalabhras in the plural and their brave ocean-like army (l. 111).¹ Mr. Krishna Sastri is inclined to accept the suggestion that Kali was the name of a dynasty of kings, Kalikula;² but nothing is known of such a dynasty yet and the mention of the Kalabhras in the plural in the Vēlvikkudi grant itself and elsewhere seems to point to a military tribe rather than a dynasty of rulers. We can only say that the Kalabhras overran the Pāndya country sometime after Mudukuḍumi’s time; how long after we cannot say. ‘How the Pāndyas were overcome by the Kalabhras, how long the sovereignty of the latter lasted and how they were driven back are points on which no information is at present forthcoming' (Venkayya). It may however be noted that the Pallava king Simhaviṣṇu who stands at the beginning of an important line of Pallava rulers, just as Kaḍungōn does in the case of the Pāndyas, and whose accession has been placed at *c.* A.D. 575 by Dubreuil, also claims to have conquered the Kaḷabhras; and the date we have arrived at for Kaḍungōn is the beginning of the seventh century A.D. or even the end of the sixth century. This raises the presumption that the Kaḷabhra occupation was a danger which threatened the independence of both the Pāndya and the Pallava dynasties and that these powers, either independently or in co-operation with each other, managed to throw off this incubus before they started on their long careers of expansion and success which so often brought them into collision with each other and lasted for close upon three centuries until the newly risen power of the Cholas of the Vijayālaya line gave them a check at the close of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries.¹ be justified.’ ‘Koccadyan’s victory was also over the Kalabhras.’ ‘The Kalabhras are Kamasas.’ He thinks also that the downfall of the Kalabhras was due to Simhavisnu and not to Kadungon and says ‘Perhaps before he had succeeded in settling the land, the Pandyan prince Kadungon came out from the dark and occupied his ancestral land.’ Mr. K. G. Sankara ingeniously suggests (*I. A.*, vol. li, p. 213) that the expression *Alavariya Adhirajarai* in the Velvikkudi grant means ‘countless Pandyas through their last representative’: but it seems simpler to make it refer to other rulers besides the Pandyas, and understand the phrase *Alavariya* as containing a rather natural exaggeration of the number of dynasties displaced.