A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.20

c12.20

The epilogue to the decad adds a number of new particulars, the most important bearing on the establishment of the Pattini cult, i.e., the worship of Kaṇṇagi as the ideal wife. Others refer to an attack on Viyalur in Nannan’s country (perhaps to suppress a rebellion), the overthrow of the fortress of Koḍukūr in the Kongu country, and intervention in a Chola war of succession resulting in that throne being secured to one prince at the cost of the lives of nine others. The stone for making the image of Pattini, the Divine Chaste Wife, was obtained after a fight with an Aryan chieftain and bathed in the Ganges before being brought to the Chera country. All these events are narrated with numerous embellishments and in epic detail in the Śilappadikāram, though whether this poem derives from the epilogue to the decad, or the epilogue from the epic, is more than we can say. The antiquity and popularity of the story of Kaṇṇagi and Kōvalan and the probable existence of other and earlier versions of the Kaṇṇagi saga which preceded the Śilappadikāram are fairly well attested, and it is not unlikely that Śenguṭṭuvan took the lead in organizing the cult of Pattini, and was supported in his effort by the contemporary rulers of the Pāndya and Chola countries and of Ceylon as the Śilappadikāram says.