A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.21

c12.21

All together five monarchs of the line of Udiyanjēral belonging to three generations are mentioned in the Padirruppattu. The number of years they are said to have ruled totals 201, while another three monarchs of the collateral line are said to have reigned for a further 58 years in all. Their reigns surely cannot have been successive, and we must therefore postulate a very considerable degree of overlapping. The Chera kingdom must have been a sort of family estate in which all the grown-up males had a share and interest—what Kautilya calls a kula-sangha, a family group, and considers a very efficient form of state organization. A similar clan-rule might also have prevailed in the Chola and Pāndya kingdoms in this period. Such an assumption for the Cholas would be the best means of explaining Śenguṭṭuvan's interference in a war of succession in which nine Chola princes lost their lives; it would also furnish a natural explanation for the occurrence in the Sangam poems of so many royal names, all to be accommodated within four or five generations.