The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9.6.3

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.