The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9.26

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