Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9: Chapter V. The First Empire

The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9

Language
English

Contents

Chapter V. The First Empire

c9.2

WE have little information about the first two kings after the restoration, Kaḍungōn and his son Māravarman Avaniśūḷāmaṇi, whose reigns may be taken to have occupied the close of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century A.D. All that we know of them comes from the Tamil portion of the Vēḷvikkudi grant and that is not much. The nearest approach to specific historical statements about Kaḍungōn is in the expressions தரணி மங்கையைப் பிர்பால் உரிமைத் திரவிதன் நீக்கித் தன்பா லுரிமை நன்கன மமைத்த (ll. 43-44) which go to show that Kaḍungōn must have had an active share in putting an end to the Kalabhra interregnum and bringing about the restoration of his own dynasty, as he is said to have abolished by his strength the claim of others to the earth and established his own claim on a firm basis (நன்கனம்). We hear even less about the reign of Kaḍungōn's son, Māravarman Avaniśūḷāmaṇi, who appears from the general expressions employed about him to have continued the work begun by his father and maintained his power at least as he inherited it though he did not perhaps add much to it.

c9.3

The rule of Śēndan or Jayantavarman who succeeded his father Māravarman may be taken to have extended over, say, A.D. 645-70. He is praised for his prowess in war and for the justice of his rule. He also bears the name Vānavan which seems to indicate that he won some successes against his Chera contemporary. When we come to Jayantavarman's successor, who was most probably his son, our records become more helpful and mention specific incidents which can also be traced in the literary

c9.4

sources relating to the age. This king is called Arikēsari Māravarman in the Veḷvikkuḍi and smaller Śinnamanūr plates and Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa in the larger Śinnamanūr grant. By the system of chronology we have adopted, this king must have come to the throne some time after the middle of the seventh century (670-710) A.D. In this reign began the great contest with the Pallavas who were rising to power, contemporaneously with the Pāṇḍyas, in the northern part of the Tamil land. The Veḷvikkuḍi grant says of him that he won a victory at Pāḷi, that he conquered the vast forces of Vilvēli in the battle of Nelvēli, and this statement is confirmed by the larger Sinnamanūr plates which say of him ‘வில்லவரும் நெல்வேலி உம்விரி பொழிற்ச்ங்கரமங் கைப் பல்லவரும் பிங்கண்ட பராங்குசன்.’ It is not now easy to identify these battlefields and no attempt can therefore be made to trace in any detail the campaigns so briefly recorded in the plates. It is extremely difficult to accept the suggestion that Nelvēli stands for the modern town of Tirunelvēli.¹ There are other achievements attributed to this king. He ruined the Paravas who did not submit to him and destroyed the people of the fertile Kuruṇāḍu (குருநாடு). He won a great battle at Śennilam and defeated on several occasions the Kēraḷa king and captured him alive with his near relations and his forces, and lastly he performed several times the hiraṇyagarbha and the tulābhāra. All these statements leave on us the

c9.5

¹ Mr. Venkayya (A.R.E., 1907, Part ii, para 20) arrived at the middle of the eighth century as the date for Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa and identified the campaigns of this king with those of Udayacandra, the Pallava general referred to in the Udayēndiram plates of Nandivarman. (S.I.I., vol. ii, pp. 361 ff.). The occurrence of the names Nelvēli and Śankaragrāma among the battles won by Udayacandra may seem to lend some support to this view. But apart from the objections we have urged against the whole system of Mr. Venkayya's identifications, we may draw attention here to the following points which seem to render it impossible to follow him. (1) He allows only twenty years for each generation, an extremely short allowance to make in calculating by averages the chronology of an uncharted age. (2) In the revised genealogy he gives at p. 54 of A. R. E. 1907-08, he separates the battles of Nelvēli and Śankaramangai and ascribes the former to the son of Śendan and the latter to his (son's) grandson--a course which is difficult to justify in the face of the Veḷvikkuḍi grant ascribing Nelvēli to the former definitely, and the Śinnamanūr plates coupling Nelvēli with Śankaramangai and ascribing them to an Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa whose identity remains to be made out. We could understand Mr. Venkayya if he had at least repeated a second battle of Nelvēli among the later (his)

c9.6.1

Arikēsari's achievements. (3) Among the achievements of the grandson of the present king, the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant refers to a success against Pallavamalla and a fight at Maṇṇaikkuḍi in which the Pāṇdyan forces were victorious; there is also a battle of Maṇṇaikkuḍi mentioned among the campaigns of Udayacandra in which he is said to have beaten the Pāṇdyan forces (S.I.I., vol. ii, p. 368, l. 60). This makes it probable that Udayacandra was the contemporary of that king rather than the present one. (4) The Madras Museum plates ascribe to the father of Jaṭilavarman, who was a Māṛavarman, the surname Pallavabhañjana. It is now generally accepted, pace Mr. Venkayya, that the Madras Museum plates and the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant belong to the same reign. Now the name Pallavabhañjana assumed by the Pāṇdyan king in an age of constant warfare between the Pāṇdyas and the Pallavas may well be taken to indicate some signal successes on the part of the ruler who assumed the name. And, from the Udayēndiram plates referred to above, we know that Udayacandra went to the aid of his master when he was hard pressed by the Tamil kings so much that he is said to have bestowed the whole kingdom ' many times ' on his Pallava master (S.I.I., vol. ii, p. 372). This again renders it very probable that Udayacandra was the contemporary of Jaṭilavarman's father and not of an earlier king.

c9.6.2

It must however be noted that there is one, and only one objection, that seems to suggest itself against the course I have adopted in the text and that is that we get two battles of Śankaramangai (grāma) by my arrangement, one in the reign of Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa and another in that of his grandson, Pallavabhañjana. But I may point out (a) that in the other arrangement Nelvēli repeats itself, so that this objection is common to both arrangements and (b) that this objection is no objection at all inasmuch as it is only to be expected that, in an age of constant warfare between two neighbouring powers, repeated skirmishes occur in the same places more than once. At any rate I feel no difficulty in distinguishing the battles of Nelvēli and Śankaramangai of the Sinnamanūr and Vēḷvikkuḍi plates in which the Pāṇdyan king claims victory from the successes won later in the same spots by Udayacandra on behalf of his master. There seems, however, to be no need for postulating two battles of Maṇṇaikkuḍi in the reign of Pallavabhañjana as the Udayēndiram plates do not seem to contradict the claim of the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant on this point. I may add that the considerations brought forward by Dr. Hultzsch (S.I.I., vol. ii, p. 364) for identifying Nelvēli with Tinnevelly do not seem to be conclusive impression of a great expansion of power brought about by this king. The Paravas were no doubt the people on the south-east coast of the Pāṇḍyan country who still continue to bear the same name.

c9.6.3

The Kuruṇāḍu which was apparently annexed after a conquest is not so easy to identify. And the campaigns against the Kēraḷa king are narrated in a rather confused passage, and the text seems to be open to several alternative readings, none of which seems to render it possible to give a connected account of the campaign or campaigns referred to. And it is not clear against whom the fight at Śennilam was undertaken or where we have to look for Śennilam.¹ But amidst all this uncertainty, one large fact stands out clearly. It is evidently under this king that the Pāṇḍyan power comes into collision, apparently for the first time in this period, with its neighbours the Pallavas on the north and the Kēraḷas on the west; and as important successes seem to have been won, we may take it that the Pāṇḍyan kingdom extended its territorial limits in both these directions beyond its traditional boundaries. And this expansion of Pāṇḍyan rule into foreign territory, that is, into territory lying outside the traditional limits of the Pāṇḍyan country, remains a permanent factor in the history of the rest of this period, and leads us to describe it as the Age of the First Empire.

c9.7

¹ It may be suggested that Śennilam is not a proper name but that the word only means a battlefield and may refer to any or all the battles won by the king. But the text of the inscription (l. 56, Vēḷvikkuḍi) and the references to Śennilam in the commentary to the Agapporuḷ leave quite a different impression on the mind.

c9.8

There is good reason for identifying this Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa Māravarman with the celebrated Kūn Pāṇḍya of legend, and the contemporary of the Śaiva saint Tirugnānasambandar. This saint is known to have been the contemporary of another saint Śiruṭṭoṇḍar and to have converted to Śaivism the Pāndyan king who was thence regarded as a saint himself. This king is called Ninraśīrnedumāran; and Sundaramūrti in his catalogue of Śaiva saints ascribes to him the battle of Nelvēli. The age of Śiruttondar was the time of the destruction of Vātāpi, the Chālukya capital, A.D. 642. These indications derived from the stories handed down in the Periyapurānam seem to confirm the system of chronology we have adopted for the Pāndyas of this period.¹ It may be noted in passing that there is nothing improbable in the story that the Pāndyan queen of this period was a Chola princess. The Cholas are not prominently mentioned anywhere in the records of this age, but they appear to have continued in obscurity somewhere in their original territory on the banks of the Kāvēri and it is likely they sought or were forced into matrimonial connections with the rising house of the Pāndyas.² Finally, we may say that there seems to be no ground for accepting the identification of this king with the hero celebrated in the stanzas of the commentary to the Iraiyanār Ahapporul.

c9.9

¹ Sundaramūrti's Tiruttondattogai, st. 8, ll. 3-4; and Periyapurānam lives of the saints mentioned; Venkayya in E.I., vol. iii, pp. 277-8 and Dubreuil, The Pallavas, pp. 67-8. Śiruttondar was older and Māravarman Pāndya perhaps younger than Gnānasambanda.

c9.10

² See verse 603 in the life of Gnānasambanda in the Periyapurānam and note that the Aihole inscription of Pulakesin (verse 30 quoted by Dubreuil, The Pallavas, p. 37) connects the Cholas with Kāvēri even in this age. Mr. Venkayya says also: 'With the powerful Pallavas on the north and the strong Pāndyas in the south, the Cholas, who were hemmed in between the two, had evidently to be satisfied with a comparatively insignificant position. . . . The Chola capital was probably Uraiyūr during all this period and the tract of country subject to them must have been very small. The intermarriages with the dominant Pāndyas make it likely that the Cholas occasionally made common cause with them against the Pallavas who must have been looked upon as intruders.' (A.S.I., 1905-6, p. 178.) There is thus no reason to accept the conclusion sometimes drawn from Yuan Chwang's itinerary that the Cholas were confined in this period to Cuddapah and Kurnool. Contra, K. V. S. Aiyar, Ancient Dekhan, pp. 112-3.

c9.11

These stanzas indeed mention the battles of Pāli, Śennilam and Nelvēli and call the king by the titles, among others, of Arikēsari, Parāṅkuśan and Neḍumāran. But there are several other battles mentioned, e.g., Viliñam of which we do not hear in epigraphy till late in the eighth century and this renders the proposed identification impossible to sustain.¹

c9.12

¹ See Krishna Sastri criticizing Venkayya in *E.I.*, vol. xvii, pp. 296-7. The view we take of this commentary has already been indicated. It seems to be utterly useless to the historian. The date of its composition must be later than the latest event mentioned in the illustrative stanzas, and the mention of Viliñam will thus take it to the close of the eighth or early ninth century A.D. And it is quite possible that a rhetorical work like this took for its hero a saintly king of legendary fame, and attributed to him all the achievements of the Pāṇḍyan line of kings that the author could think of in his day.

c9.13

The son of Arikēsari Parāṅkuśan was Kōccaḍayan also called Raṇadhīra. He must have succeeded his father at the end of the seventh century A.D. or early in the eighth. This king appears to have been a great warrior who often waged aggressive war against his neighbours. He is given the titles Vānavan, Śembiyan, Śoḷan which seem to imply some claim to supremacy over his Chera and the Chola contemporaries. He is also called Madurakaruṇāṭakan and Kongarkōmān and these titles do not seem to have been empty boasts but the index of substantial military achievements which appear to have had a wide range; for he is said to have attacked and subdued the Mahārathas in the great city of Mangalāpuram which seems to have been no other than the modern Mangalore.² It must, however, be noted that the results of this raid on the west coast do not appear to have been permanent as portions of the Kongu country are said to have been conquered afresh by his son. Another campaign which is definitely mentioned in the grant before the fight in Mangalāpuram was directed against the Āy king, who was evidently a mountain chief belonging to an ancient line of chiefs who held sway in the neighbourhood of the Western Ghats in the Tinnevelly District.¹ The encounter between the forces of this Āy king and those of Ranadhira took place in Marudūr which may be Tiruppudaimarudūr near Ambāsamudram and in this battle the Āy chief was worsted and apparently had to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pāndya sovereign.² It is rather strange that this warlike king is not even mentioned by name in the Tamil portion of the larger Śinnamanūr plates. In the smaller set of plates from the same village we have the victory of Marudūr mentioned, but the portion containing the name of the king has not been recovered.

c9.14

² Dubreuil who did not have the text of the Veḷvikkuḍi grant before him quotes Mr. Venkayya’s summary of this part of the grant and asks in astonishment, ‘This victory at Marudūr, this ocean of enemies, this Mahāratha, what are all these?’ (*The Pallavas*, p. 68.) The suggestion he makes in the next paragraph on the same page that Kōccaḍayan must have fought against Chāḷukya Vikramāditya I when the latter was encamped near Trichinopoly is hard to accept in the face of the definite statement in

c9.15

¹ Mr. Krishna Sastri reads Āyavēl; but see Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao in Trav. Arch. Series, vol. i, p. 3 on the Āy kings.

c9.16

² I am inclined to accept Mr. Krishna Sastri's suggestion that Sengodi and Pudānkottu are not names of other battles but signify the regalia of the Āy king, though the text here does not seem to be very clear. (See E. I., vol. xvii, p. 307, notes 2 and 3.)

c9.17

The son and successor of Kōccayan Ranadhira was Māravarman Rājasimha I who has been strangely miscalled Tēr-Māran by the epigraphists. The Śinnamanūr plates (larger) only mention him and all that we know of him is derived from the Vēlvikkudi grant. He seems to have been a worthy successor of his father and won important successes against the Pallavas and in the Kongu country. The Madras Museum plates call him Pallavabhanjana and the Sanskrit portion of the Vēlvikkudi grant says that he defeated Pallavamalla who fled from the field

c9.18

the Vēlvikkudi grant that the Pāndyan king attacked the Mahārathas in the great city of Mangalāpuram.

c9.19

of battle. In a highly ornate passage the Tamil portion of the same grant ascribes to him a series of victories at Neḍuvayal, Kuṟumaḍai, Maṇṇikuricci, Tirumaṅgai, Pūvalūr, Koḍumbāḷūr and another place (whose name is not legible) and then says that the Pallava king was deprived of his splendour at Kuḷumbūr where the Pāṇḍya captured numberless elephants and horses from his enemy's forces. There seems to be little room for doubt that here we get the Pāṇḍyan version of the campaigns which led to the siege of Nandivarman Pallavamalla in Nandigrāma by the Tamil princes which was raised by the victorious general of the Pallava King, Udayacandra by name, who won several successes against his foes as narrated in the Udayêndiram plates of Pallavamalla. Dubreuil has suggested that the Pāṇḍya king espoused the cause of a son of Paramēśvaravarman II who was kept out of his throne by the usurper Nandivarman Pallavamalla and that this Pāṇḍyan interference in Pallava disputes may be traced to a marriage connection which Kōccaḍayan contracted with a Pallava princess.¹ However that may be, there seems to be little reason to doubt that Māṟavarman Rājasimha Pāṇḍya I was the contemporary and opponent of Pallavamalla. Now, turning to his campaigns elsewhere, we find that he defeated his foes at a place called Periyalūr and crossed the Kāvēri to bring about the subjugation of Maḷakoṅgam which has been located on the borderland of the modern Trichinopoly and Tanjore districts.² The Maḷava king who was reduced to subjection gave his daughter in marriage to the Pāndyan king. From the Malava country Rājasimha proceeded to Pāndikkodumudi where he ‘worshipped the lotus feet of Pasupati and gave away with great pleasure heaps of gold and lustrous gems’. This perhaps means that the conquests of the Pāndyan king extended up to Kodumudi. We also learn that he contracted relationship with the Ganga king. The details of this transaction are given later on in the Vēlvikkudi plates in narrating the achievements of Mārangāri, the *ājnapti* of the grant. We learn that this Mārangāri was aided by Pūrvarājar (eastern kings) in a big fight at Venbai in which the powerful Vallabha king was beaten when the Ganga princess was secured and offered in marriage to the Pāndyan prince who is referred to as Kongarkōn and who may have been the son of Rājasimha by the Malava princess. It is not easy to explain satisfactorily the political transactions referred to in this account. Mr. Krishna Sastri has observed, ‘The information that a Ganga princess was married with the Pāndya family is not mentioned in any of the Ganga records of this period which falls into the reign of Śivamāra I (A.D. 755-65). The Vallabha or the Western Chālukya king who was defeated on this marriage occasion was probably Kīrttivarman II, who succeeded to the Chālukya throne in A.D. 746 or 747, and whose army is stated in his records to have defeated the army of the Kēralas, the Cholas and the Pāndyas.’¹ It is clear that much still remains to be explained before we can make a clear story out of these references to the sambandam with the Gangarāja.

c9.20

¹ Dubreuil, *The Pallavas*, pp. 68-9. M. Dubreuil seems to assume that Arikēsari Parāṅkuśa's son was a Parāntaka ; but he was only a Jaṭila according to the Sanskrit part of the larger Śinnamanūr plates. It may also be noted that Nelvēli seems to have been fought by the Pallava king against a Śabara king Udayana ; and only at Maṇṇaikkuḍi is Udayacandra said definitely to have faced the Pāṇḍyan forces.

c9.21

² See K. V. S. Aiyar, *Ancient Dekhan*, p. 129.

c9.22

¹ E.I., vol. xvii, pp. 295-6; *contra* K. G. Sankara, *Q. J. M. S.*, vol. x, p. 180, who treats the Mālava princess as identical with the Ganga princess, i.e. holds मलंवेन्द्रकन्या of l. 24 = गंगाराजेन्य कन्यिया रत्तिनम (l. 127). Dr. S. K. Aiyangar seems to identify Pūrvarājar with the Pallavas and treat Venbai as a decisive incident in the long duel between them and the Chālukyas. (Introduction to *The Pallavas of Kānchi*, by R. Gopalan.)

c9.23

This king Rājasimha is also said to have performed many Gōsahasras, Hiranyagarbhas and Tulābhāras and to have relieved the distress of Brahmins learned in the Vedas. He is also reported, lastly, to have renewed Kūḍal, Vanji and Kōḷi. If this is a reference to the three capitals of the Pāṇdyas, the Cheras and the Cholas, the power of Rājasimha must have been very great indeed.¹ His rule may be taken to have extended from about A.D. 740 to about, say, five years before A.D. 770 which was definitely in the reign of his successor, and corresponded to some regnal year later than the third in his reign.²

c9.24

¹ This is how Mr. Krishna Sastri understands the text. He thinks that this Vanji was surely Karūr, though he wisely concedes that an older capital of the Cheras may have been another Vanji. But the text is not without difficulty. It runs ‘கூடல்வஞ்சிகோழி என்னு மாடமாமதில் புதுக்கியும்’. Mr. K. G. Sankara translates this into ‘renewed the walls named (ennum) Kūḍal, Vanji and Kōḷi’ and remarks: ‘All the walls might have been in Madura and only named after the other capitals in memory of a previous conquest of the Cholas and Cheras’ (I. A., li, p. 214). This explanation would be excellent, if Kūḍal were not there in the same rank with Vanji and Kōḷi. On the other hand Mr. Krishna Sastri’s translation is ‘renewed the palaces and the high ramparts (of the capital towns) named Kūḍal, Vanji and Kōḷi’ and as he points out, we must understand after ‘ennum’ some word like ‘nagarangaḷin’. An alternative suggestion of Mr. Sastri is to take māḍamāmadil to mean a capital city (E.I., vol. xvii, p. 307).

c9.25

² Mārangāri who is the āṇatti of the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant of third year becomes uttaramantri, excavates the Ānamalai temple in A.D. 770 and apparently dies soon after—hence it seems necessary to make A.D. 770 some year later than the third in which Mārangāri would appear not to have been uttaramantri.

c9.26

This successor was the son of Rājasimha by the Maḷava queen and the donor of the Vēḷvikkuḍi and the Madras Museum plates. These records together with the Ānamalai and Trichinopoly inscriptions give him the names Jaṭila, Parāntaka, and Varaguṇa-Mahārāja besides Māraṇjaḍayan and Neḍunjaḍayan. It is possible to give an unusually complete account of this king's reign. His inscriptions range from the third regnal year (Vēḷvikkuḍi) to the forty-third (at Ērvāḍi, 605 of 1915) and it may well be that he reigned for nearly fifty years, say A.D. 765-815. Very early in his reign he won a victory against the Pallava who was either Nandivarman Pallavamalla or some representative of his, at Peṇṇāgaḍam, on the south bank of the Kāvēri. This place would appear to have been somewhere near Tanjore.¹ He also suppressed with a firm hand a local rising of Nāṭṭukkurumbu headed by Āy Vēḷ.² In the third year of his reign, Mārangāri of the Vaidyakula of Karavandapura (Kaḷakkāḍ in the Tinnevelly district) must have held an important place under the king, if he was not already *uttaramantri* (chief minister), as he figures as the *ājṇapti* in the Vēḷvikkuḍi grant. We have seen that he had a part in bringing about the marriage alliance of the ruling family with a Ganga princess in the previous reign. This same Mārangāri alias Madhurakavi built a stone temple for Viṣṇu (*Śilagṛham, Karṛaḷi*) in the Ānamalai hill, six miles to the east of Madura and made a gift of a rich *agrahāra* in the neighbourhood to the Brahmins evidently on the occasion of the setting up of the image of Narasimha in the temple. This was in A.D. 770 and Madhurakavi seems to have died soon after. His brother Māran Eyinan who also became *uttaramantri* perhaps succeeding to the position held by Madhurakavi made further additions to the temple of Viṣṇu and thus finished the work his brother had left incomplete.¹ Besides these two brothers, other members of the same family appear to have been occupying high positions in the government under Parāntaka Neḍunjaḍayan. Dhīrataran Mūrti Eyinan, who is probably mentioned also in the Veḷvikkuḍi grant as a subdonee, was perhaps another brother of Madhurakavi and was *mahāsāmanta* in the seventeenth year of the king when the grant recorded in the Museum plates was made; his family is referred to as ‘வாத்தியகேய சங்கீதங்களால் மலிவெய்திய வங்களந்தை வைத்தியகுலம்.’ Another member of the same family was Sāttan Gaṇavadi who was also *mahāsāmanta* earlier than Mūrti Eyinan in the sixth year of the king's rule.² The Vaidyakula of the fortress city of Karavandapura (was Vangaḷandai another name for the same city?) thus occupied a prominent place among the king's officers; but it cannot be taken as established that the Madhurakavi of this family was the same as the Vaiṣṇava Āḷvār, in spite of the similarity in name and religious faith between the two.³

c9.27

¹ K. V. S. Aiyar, *op. cit.*, p. 133 points out that inscription No. 314 of 1907 locates the village in Tāñjavūr Kūrram. Inscription No. 51 of 1895 of the fourth year of Māraṇjaḍayan at Tillaisthānam near Tiruvaiyār may be taken to confirm this. But see *A.R.E.*, 1906-7, p. 53, para 21.

c9.28

² The Vēḷs seems to have been local chieftains somewhat resembling the feudal barons of mediæval Europe. The Tamil Śangam dictionary under *Vēḷir* quotes the *Abhidānacintāmaṇi* and calls them குறுநில மன்னர். Nāṭṭukkurumbu may be Kurumbanāḍ as suggested by Mr. H. K. Sastri.

c9.29

¹ See *E.I.*, vol. viii, pp. 317 ff and *Trav. Arch. Series*, vol. i, p. 157 and *n.* 23. Mr. Gopinatha Rao has observed (*n.* 21), ‘It is curious to note that a shrine for Narasimha, the Brahman lion-god, was excavated in the Ānamalai hill (the Jaina Elephant hill). Perhaps it was intended to symbolize that the lion of Brahminism put down the elephant Jainism.’ For the orthodox legend about this hill and temple see chapter I (*ante*).

c9.30

² Madras Museum plates and Tirupparangunram inscription (37 of 1908) in the *I.A.*, vol. xxii, pp. 67 and 71.

c9.31

³ See Venkayya in *A.R.E.*, 1907-8 where the identity is proposed and *Sen Tamil*, vol. iv, p. 339 and vol. vi, pp. 493-6 for a criticism by Mr. Gopinatha Rao; also K. G. Sankara, *Q.J.M.S.*, vol. x, p. 185. Also Mr. Gopinatha Rao's *Sri Vaisnavas*, pp. 18-20 for a retraction of the *Sen Tamil* article.

c9.32

To return to the military transactions of the reign; before the seventeenth year of his reign this king appears to have extended his conquests considerably to the north and it would appear that much of the fighting was undertaken against the same old foes as had opposed his father in his northern wars. There is some reason to believe, however, that the victory of Neḍunjaḍayan was at many points more complete than that of his father and that his campaigns had, speaking relatively, somewhat more permanent results. He fought at Veḷḷūr, Viṇṇam and Śeliyakkuḍi against foes about whose identity nothing is known. He put to flight Adigan of the bright lance in the two battles of Āyiravēli Ayirūr and Pugaḷiyūr on the north banks of the Kāvēri and captured his chariot together with several of his war horses. In his war against the Pāndya king, Adigan was aided by the Pallava and the Kēraḷa whose forces advanced from the east and the west and were repulsed with great loss by the opposing Pāndyan forces. Evidently as a result of these campaigns, the king of Western Kongu was captured with his elephants and sent into confinement within the walls of the Pāndyan capital Madura and the whole of the Kongu country came under Pāndyan rule. It is well known that a family of chieftains named Adigans or Adigamāns ruled from Tagaḍūr (Dharmapuri)¹ in the Kongu country. We may take it that the Adigan who was repulsed at Ayirūr and Pugaḷiyūr was a feudatory of the Western Kongu chief who fought against the Pāndya on behalf of his master and the appearance of the Kēraḷa and Pallava forces in the campaigns may be explained as the result of a combined effort of the other three chief powers of the Tamil land to set some limit to the growing aggression of the Pāndyas.² The coalition apparently failed and as a result there was a considerable extension of the territories under Pāṇḍyan rule. This extension seems to have been sufficiently permanent to allow the king to undertake the construction of a temple of considerable size (குன்ற மன்னதோர் கோயில்) to Viṣṇu in a place called Kānjivāyppērūr which seems to have been in the Kongu country.¹ Perhaps the inscriptions at Trichinopoly (414 of 1904) and Ambāsamudram (105 of 1905), dated in the eleventh and the sixteenth years of the king may be taken as records connected with the wars we have just described. The Trichinopoly inscription refers to the destruction of Vēmbil and the king's encampment at Niyamam in the eleventh year. The Ambāsamudram record contains a gift made five years later from the king's camp at Araśūr on the banks of the Peṇṇai in the Toṇḍainād. It may be mentioned, by the way, that though this king is called *paramavaiṣṇavan* in the Museum plates and builds a temple to Viṣṇu in Kānjivāyppērūr, he does appear to have been quite ready to encourage Śaivite temples and endow them richly.² The Trichinopoly

c9.33

¹ See E.I., vol. vi, p. 331; also A.R.E., 1906, part ii, para 34.

c9.34

² Mr. Venkayya (I.A., vol. xxii, p. 66) is inclined to identify Adigan with the Western Kongu king captured and imprisoned at Madura. But lines 25-34 of the Museum plates when carefully analysed seem to support

c9.35

¹ Mr. Venkayya was naturally in great difficulty in 1893 when he tried to identify the places mentioned in the Madras Museum plates. But he spent great ingenuity over the names Kankabhūmi and Kānjivāyppērūr and tried to connect them with Tirukkaḷukkuṉṟam and Kāñchīpuram. (I.A., xxii, pp. 66-7.) All this was of course wrong. Kankabhūmi in the context only stands for some distant land up to which the fame of the Pāṇḍyan king reached and has nothing to do with ‘Kites’ or the Gangas. See e.g., under ‘Kanka’ in Fleet’s Topographical List, I.A., xxii, p. 180. Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao has drawn attention to the mention of ‘கொங்கிற் காஞ்சிவாய்ப் பேரூர்’ in the Periyapurāṇam, v. 88 in Eyarkōn-kalik-kāmanāyaṉār Purāṇam. I am, however, unable to trace the presence of even the ruins of a Viṣṇu temple in this place, if it is identical with Pērur in the Coimbatore district.

c9.36

² Cf. Venkayya (I.A., xxii, pp. 64-5), who makes a similar inference from the salutation to Brahma, Viṣṇu and Śiva in order in the Madras Museum plates.

c9.37

better the reconstruction suggested in the text. Re. Tagaḍūr, see A.R.E., 1901, p. 5.

c9.38

and Ambāsamudram inscriptions just referred to may be quoted in evidence of this; a record of the thirteenth year of the king (155 of 1903) found at Tiruccendūr mentions a considerable endowment from the proceeds of which the cost of regular worship in the temple of Kumāra all the year round was to be met. Yet another inscription of the thirty-ninth year (104 of 1905) records the gift of three lamps to the god Tiruppōttuḍaiya Bhaṭārar of Ambāsamudram.

c9.39

The Museum plates also mention that Neḍunjaḍayan conquered the king of Veṇād (South Travancore) and captured large numbers of his elephants and horses along with his treasures and his country. In the campaign that led to this annexation, the strongly fortified port of Viḷiñam was attacked and destroyed by the Pāndyan forces. Viḷiñam seems to have been a great and flourishing emporium which often roused the cupidity of the foreign invaders of Travancore; it would appear to have recovered rapidly after each disaster that befell it, for we find it still forming the subject of attack by the Chola emperors three centuries after the days of Neḍunjaḍayan. The first conquest of Veṇād thus referred to in the Museum plates must have taken place before the seventeenth year of the king's rule. It was soon after this conquest that the king undertook the task of strongly fortifying Karavandapuram (which has been identified with the village of Kaḷakkād in the Tinnevelly district) perhaps because it was on the frontier of the newly conquered country. At any rate Veṇād does not seem to have accepted this conquest as final, and we have evidence in the Trivandrum Museum stone inscription (277 of 1895) that the king was still fighting in the neighbourhood of Viḷiñam more than ten years after his first invasion. It may also be noted that another

c9.40

inscription found at Kaḷugumalai (43 of 1908) records an expedition in the twenty-third year of the king’s rule in which he went against Śaḍayan Karunandan of the Malaināḍu and destroyed Ariviyūrkkōṭṭai which evidently belonged to this mountain chief on the present Travancore frontier.¹ This Karunandan appears to have been a member of an ancient family of Ay chieftains associated with the Podiya mountain and perhaps friendly to the kings of Veṇāḍ in the period of their struggle against the Pāṇḍya expansion.

c9.41

¹ See T. A. Gopinatha Rao in *Trav. Arch. Series*, vol. i, pp. 3-5. His arrangement of the Pāṇḍyas of course differs from that followed here. But there seems to be little difficulty in the way of ascribing the Kaḷugumalai record to our king. Mr. V. Rangachari seems to have misunderstood No. 43 of 1908 (see p. 1465, entry No. 250 of his *Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency*).

c9.42

No records of any fight undertaken by the king after the twenty-seventh year have come down to us. But there seems to be no reason to doubt that he reigned for nearly fifty years; though it is not easy to decide such questions beyond the reach of doubt, we may ascribe to this king the inscriptions (863 of 1917 and 605 of 1915) of the forty-second and forty-third years of Māraṇajaḍayan found respectively at Kaḷugumalai and Ērvāḍi. There is reason to believe that this king was among the most powerful of the rulers of the Pāṇḍya dynasty in this age, and it was perhaps under him that the territories under the rule of the Pāṇḍyas attained a great and permanent extension by his successes in the Kongu country and in the Veṇāḍ. The sway of Parāntaka Neḍunjaḍayan extended far beyond Trichinopoly into the Tanjore, Salem and Coimbatore districts, and all that lay south was also under him.

c9.43

One very interesting question, which is as elusive as it is interesting, that is connected with the name of Varaguṇa is that of the date of Māṇikkavāśagar. Before the discovery, about 1906, of the larger Śinnamanūr plates and other records there was only one Varaguṇa known, and that was the king of the legend of the vision of Śivalōkam in the *Tiruvilaiyāḍal*. And this reference to a Varaguṇa did not help very much in deciding the age of the Śaiva saint who refers to the king in the *Tirukkōvaiyār*; but since two Varaguṇas became available to history from the new epigraphical finds, several scholars have, with great eagerness, sought to fix the age of Māṇikkavāśagar by identifying the Varaguṇa mentioned by him with one or the other of these kings. But it does not seem that this epigraphical short cut to the date of this saint is in any way better supported than that other effort to fix the age of the Śangam from the references in the Vēḷvikkudi grant which we have seen no reason to accept as satisfactory. But it is not possible to pursue the question of the age of Māṇikkavāśagar at any length here; it can only be stated that there are serious difficulties in the way of assigning Māṇikkavāśagar to the reign of either of these kings in the eighth or the ninth century A.D. and that the Varaguṇa Pāndya referred to in the *Tirukkōvaiyār* must still be taken to be the Varaguṇa of legend about whom, as yet, we do not know anything more than is contained in that story.¹

c9.44

¹ See Venkayya in *E.I.*, vol. ix, p. 89 and M. Srinivasa Aiyangār, *Tamil Studies*, pp. 401 ff and contrast, Pandit V. Swaminatha Aiyar in his *Introduction to the Tiruvālavāyudaiyār Tiruvilaiyāḍal*, first edition, pp. 66-7, who supports an early date by a number of weighty literary references; also Messrs. K. G. Sesha Aiyar and Ponnambalam Pillai in the *Tamilian Antiquary*. The arguments of Mr. Sesha Aiyar seem to be complete as a refutation of the epigraphists' position, and Mr. Pillai approaches the question of the date of the saint from a different standpoint, that of the Christian Church in Malabar.

c9.45

Minor considerations apart, the main points in the question seem to be the following: Māṇikkavāśagar *does* claim that the miracle of the transformation of foxes into horses was performed by Śivan on his account (நமை ஆண்டான்) in Tiru Ponnuśal, l. 45; also Tiru Ammānai, ll. 17-18; Tiruvārttai, ll. 14-15 and Ānanadamālai, ll. 25-26, to save him from the consequences of his master's wrath. And Appar, by general consent the earliest of the three Tēvāram hymnists, does refer to this miracle and also to a Vācaka in a manner which seems to leave no room for doubt that it is a reference to our saint. Then there is the fact that in all the traditional lists of Pāndya Kings, the contemporary of Mānikkavāśagar is placed several generations before Kūn Pāndya, the contemporary of Gnānasambandar. It must also be noticed that Mānikkavāśagar's life and history occupy a rather earlier, and perhaps more conspicuous place in the cycle of the Madura sports of Śivan and that it has not been possible to recognize so far any clear epigraphical references except to the last of the kings in the lists given in the different versions of these stories. It seems a natural inference from all this that Mānikkavāśagar, the antagonist of Buddhism, was older than the saints of the age of Sambandar whose chief contests appear to have been with the Jains.

c9.46

The chief argument against this conclusion has generally been found in the absence of any reference to Mānikkavāśagar in the catalogue of Śaiva saints (Tiruttondattogai) given by Sundaramūrti, who may be taken to have lived within a century of Gnānasambandar, the contemporary of Arikēsari Parānkuśa in the late seventh century. This may have been an accident, and at best an argument from silence cannot be pressed far. But Mr. Sesha Aiyar has pointed out with great plausibility that the expression ‘பொய்யடிமையில்லாத புலவர்’ in Sundara's list of saints does refer to our saint as it fits in very well with the traditional history of his life and doings. Those who hesitate to accept this suggestion are influenced by the authority of Nambi Andār Nambi and his successors, who have regularly followed him in interpreting this expression as a reference to the poets of the Madura Sangam. Great as must be the authority of Nambi and his successors in matters of religion and theology, I have no hesitation in declaring with Mr. Sesha Aiyar that the history involved in their interpretation of the Tiruttondattogai seems to be, much of it, wrong. The point is that continuity in religious tradition seems to be quite compatible with a break in secular historical tradition. For an illustration I may refer to the case of another saint in the list, Śeruttunai, who is spoken of as a king of Tanjore by Sundaramūrti; Nambi makes no mention of his having been a king at all, evidently because in his day nothing was known about such a ruler of Tanjore; and a little later, Sēkkilār in his Periyapurānam actually makes a Vaiśya (வேளாள்குடி முதல்வர்) of this king of Tanjore.

c9.47

My conclusion therefore is that Mānikkavāśagar must be taken to have preceded the Tēvāram Trio and that once more epigraphy, despite the great advances it has made in recent years, fails to establish the large claims made on its behalf in the matter of settling beyond possibility of doubt the chronology of early South Indian History.

Linked texts (7)