Short Essay on the biography of Maravarman Kulasekhara – I

Maravarman Kulasekhra I (AD 1268-AD 1308) was entitled Kollamkonda Pandya. It was during his period that Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller visited the Tamil country. The social conditions of the Pandyan country, find mention in the writings of the Muslim historian Wassaf.

In his period the Pandyan country was ruled by five members of the royal family, a fact attested to by Marco Polo. It was necessary for him to reconquer Ceylon. His armies were led by one Arya Chakravarthi who brought the tooth relic of the Buddha from Ceylon to Madurai.

The Mahavumsa says that Parakramabahu III of Ceylon peacefully persuaded the Pandyas to return the relic. He was as a warrior, as powerful as his predecessor. He appointed members of the royal family as viceroys over conquered territories. Jatavarman Sundara Pandya and Maravarman Vikrama Pandya are two such officers we hear of. Maravarman Kulasekhkara had two sons, Jatavarman Sundara Pandya and Jatavarman Virapandya.

Of these the former was the son born of his wife and the latter the son by a mistress. The king was partial to the latter and arranged for the bastard’s succession. The elder was naturally enraged at this and he killed his father and captured the throne in AD 1310. Wassaf and Amir Khusru relate this story.

These two half brothers brought civil war to the country. Ultimately Sudara Pandya who fared worst in this struggle for succession fled to the court of Ala-ud-din Khalji and probably persuaded Malik Kafur to include Madurai in his tour programme. The Khalji was met by the Pandya in Dvarasamudra, Capital of the Hoysalas. Malik Kafur was already angry with Virapandya for providing some help to the Hoysala king.

Again, no particular reason was ever necessary for Malik Kafur to give the benefit of his raids to any region in India. Above all the southern districts of the Tamil country were in a state of unprecedented confusion. What happened after M^lik Kafur set foot in the Tamil country belongs to the story of Muslim invasion of South India.

Jatavarman Sundara Pandya, however, continued during Khusru’s invasion and survived Ravivarman Kulasekhara’s invasion also. We hear of one Parakrama Pandya as a contemporary of Muhammad-bin-Tughluq. The Tughluq declared the whole of the Pandyan country as part of his empire. The decline of the Tughluq’s power led to the establishment of the Sultanate of Madura.

Decline

The history of the Pandyas after the Muslim invasion is the story of a dynasty definitely on the way out of history. Jatavarman Virapandya ruled for some years after the first Muslim invasion. About 1340 there was some evidence of reclamation of the country from the sorry state to which it was reduced by the northern invasion.

The establishment of the Sultanate of Madura in 1330 obliged the Pandyas to seek shelter away from the capital. Even this circumstance, however, did not mean their extinction. The Pandyas were ruling over the southern parts of the Pandyan country in an unorganised and desultory manner. The history of the Sultanate of Madura which was an interlude between the Pandyan Hindu rule and the Vijayanagar Hindu rule belongs to another chapter.

The last phase

We shall here try to complete the history of the Pandyas by narrating the remaining part of their brief story in the history of South India and which goes on till the end of the 16th century and then thereafter to disappear. Nilakanta Sastri thinks that the failure of the Pandyas to recover their ancestral kingdom from the Muslims justified Vijayanagar imperalism.

This is no more than to say that the Maratha failure against the Afghan justified British Imperialism. The reality of the matter, however, was that with the disappearance of the Pandyas and with the establishment of the Madura Sultanate, Tamil self-government came to an end so far as the Pandyan kingdom was concerned.

In the case of the Muslims it was the Tughluq’s rule through the Madura Sultan who later became independent; in the case of the suceeding power it was Vijayanagar governing through the Nayaks of Madura who also became independent in their turn indicating the course which Indian imperialism ran. We hear of a Maravarman Kulasekhara who ruled from AD 1314 to A./D. 1345 and though his writ did not run far, he entitled himself the conqueror of every country.

There are records about a Jatavarman Parakrama Pandya whose reign period was practically the same as that of the aforesaid Maravarman Kulasekhara. A Maravarman Virapandya also started ruling around AD 1334 and the Vijayanagar invasion of the south occurred during this period though the enemy of the Vijayanagar invader was the Sultan of Madura. This Virapandya ruled upto 1380 and he was obliged to wind up under Vijayanagar pressure. We hear of a Jatavarman Parakrama Pandya who is associated with Tenkasi in theTirunelveli district.

There was a Jatavarman Kulasekhara who rebuilt the temple at Ilanji near Kurralam. His jurisdiction was confined to parts of Tirunelveli, early in the 15th century. There was then a Maravarman Virapandya who ruled till 1497 and again a Maravarman Sundara Pandya who ruled from AD 1531 to AD 1555. These scrappy pieces of information about these kings give us no more than their names and a few other minor details.

There was one Arikesari Parakrama who ruled in the middle of the 15th century. He claims to have had minor local victories and to have inflicted a major defeat on the king of Kerala. It is probable that he was the king defeated by Narasanayaka.

This king is known for his building the Visvanatha temple at Tenkasi. During the reign of one Sri Vallabha who came to power about 1534 there was a conflict between him and the ruler of Travancore which was resolved by Achutarya of Vijayanagar by the defeat of the latter. Subsequently a Pandyan princess was given in marriage to the Emperor.

Even this external aid could not prop up the declining Pandyas for long. The end of the line, however, is marked by two distinguished names Adivirarama and his cousin Varatungarama whose distinction consisted not in ephameral political conquests but in solid contribution to literature which will stand to their credit for ever.

Adivirarama’s Naidatam and his Andadi have a permanent place in medieval Tamil literature and the latter work is equated with the Tiruvachakam itself. It was but appropriate that the Pandyas who originated the Tamil Sangam should end their history with illustrious names which having found political diplomacy and military conquests useless and unworthy came back to the muse of poetry which they always adorned.