The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9.19

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.