Pandya dynasty

• 1. Introduction

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  The Pandya dynasty held power continuously from roughly 400 BCE to 1618 CE, making it one of the longest-ruling dynasties in recorded history. That is more than two thousand years of kings, wars, sacred relics, and pearl fisheries, all centered on the city of Madurai in South India. The Pandyas were one of four great kingdoms known as Tamilakam, alongside the Pallavas, the Cholas, and the Cheras. They called themselves the "mu-ventar" alongside their rivals: the three crowned rulers of the Tamil region. What drove a dynasty to endure for so long? How did a kingdom rooted in pearl diving and Tamil poetry build an empire that stretched into Sri Lanka and drew the attention of Greek ambassadors, Roman traders, and Venetian explorers? And how, after two thousand years, did it finally end?

• 2. Pearls, Ports, and Ancient Trade

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  Korkai, a port at the mouth of the Tambraparni river, was the heartbeat of early Pandya wealth. Greek historian Megasthenes, writing in the 4th century BCE, reported that the Pandyas derived enormous wealth from their pearl fisheries in the Gulf of Mannar. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a 1st-century CE merchant's handbook, notes that convicts were used as pearl divers at Korkai, and that pearls from the Pandya country were in demand across the kingdoms of north India and beyond. Literary accounts describe fishermen diving to avoid sharks, surfacing with right-whorled chanks they would blow as sounding shells. The ancient port of Alagankulam served alongside Korkai as a second exchange centre. Graeco-Roman merchants established trading settlements on the harbours of the Tamil region, and the trade network connecting South Asia with the Middle East and Southeast Asia persisted well past the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Contacts between south India and the Middle East continued even after Byzantium lost its Red Sea ports in the 7th century CE. The city of Madurai itself appears in Kautilya's Arthashastra, written in the 4th century BCE, under the name "Mathura of the south."

• 3. Voices From the Ancient World

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  Maurya emperor Asoka, writing in the 3rd century BCE, named the Pandyas in both his 2nd and 13th Major Rock Edicts. His 13th edict describes the reach of his doctrine of dharma as extending "in the south among the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni river." Those edicts place the Pandyas clearly outside the Maurya empire itself, described as a people on friendly terms with Asoka rather than his subjects. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to Chandragupta Maurya, located the Pandyas in the far south of India "extending into the ocean" and described their kingdom as consisting of 365 villages, each providing for the royal household one day per year. He called the Pandya queen Pandaia a daughter of Herakles. The 1st-century CE author of the Periplus placed a Pandya kingdom around the district of Nelcynda, about 500 stadia from the port of Muziris. Ptolemy, writing around 140 CE, labeled the Pandya country "Pandya Mediterranea" and the capital "Modura Regia Pandionis." Strabo recorded that an Indian king named Pandion sent presents to Augustus Caesar, and the 1st-century historian Nicolaus of Damascus met the ambassador of a king "named Pandion" at Antioch around 13 CE. As late as 361 CE, the Roman emperor Julian received an embassy from a Pandya ruler. In 1288 and 1293 CE, Venetian traveller Marco Polo visited and left a detailed description of the people, noting that the darkest men were held in the highest esteem and that their gods were depicted as black while their devils were portrayed as white.

• 4. Poetry, Sangams, and Sacred Learning

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  The Sangams, legendary academies of Tamil scholarship, were said to have met in Madurai under the direct patronage of Pandya kings. Several Pandya rulers claimed to be poets themselves, and the Purananuru and Agananuru collections contain poems attributed to the kings as well as poems sung in their praise. The work Mathuraikkanci, by the author Mankudi Maruthanar, addresses his patron Talaihalanganum Nedunjeliyan as the Lord of Korkai and the Warlord of the Southern Parathavar People, and gives a full description of Madurai and the Pandya country under his rule. In the famous battle of Talaiyalanganam, fought in east Tanjore, the Pandya is said to have defeated combined forces of the Chera and the Chola. Another major work, the Netunalvatai, by Nakkirar, contains a description of king Nedunjeliyan's palace. The epic poem Silappatikaram records that the emblem of the Pandyas was a fish. Beyond poetry, the temples of the Pandya country functioned as banks, schools, dispensaries, and poorhouses, making them among the largest employers and landowners in the region. The Meenakshi Temple in Madurai stood as the most celebrated of these. When king Kadungon revived Pandya power in the late 6th century CE, his rise coincided precisely with the flowering of the Shaivite Nayanars and the Vaishnavite Alvars, the devotional poets whose bhakti movement reshaped religious life across south India.

• 5. The Imperial Century

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  Jatavarman Sundara I ascended the Pandya throne in 1251 CE and proceeded to build the dynasty's largest empire. He pushed his armies north into the Telugu country as far as Nellore, south into Kerala, and across the water into Sri Lanka. He forced Hoysala king Somesvara back onto the Mysore Plateau and eventually had him killed in 1262 CE. The city of Kanchi served as a second capital during this period. His younger brother Jatavarman Vira II invaded Sri Lanka in 1262-1264 CE and again in 1270 CE. When Jatavarman Sundara I died in 1268, Maravarman Kulasekara I took the throne and continued expanding. Around 1279 he defeated a combined Hoysala-Chola alliance, leaving himself virtually unchallenged across the Chola country and the southern Tamil-speaking portions of the Hoysala kingdom. He then invaded Sri Lanka, ruled by Bhuvanaikabahu I, whose forces were defeated and who "carried away to the Pandya country the venerable Tooth Relic" of the Buddha along with the island's wealth. Marco Polo, visiting in the 1280s and 1290s, described a kingdom of five royal brothers ruling a region famous for its pearls, one of them bearing the title Sundara Pandi Devar. Sri Lanka remained under Pandya influence until around 1308-1309 CE.

• 6. Collapse and Endurance

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  The Pandya empire began to fracture after the death of Maravarman Kulasekhara I in 1310. His sons Vira Pandya IV and Sundara Pandya IV turned against each other in a war of succession. That civil war coincided with the arrival of Malik Kafur, the general of Alauddin Khalji of the Delhi Sultanate, who marched into the south in March 1311. The Pandya brothers fled their headquarters, and the Khalji forces pursued them without success before withdrawing to Delhi by late April 1311. By 1312 Pandya control over south Kerala was lost. Sundara Pandya, defeated in the ongoing civil conflict, sought Khalji help to recover ground, and did regain the South Arcot region by 1314. Two further sultanate expeditions followed: one led by Khusro Khan in 1314, and another by Jauna Khan in 1323 under sultan Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq. In 1323 the Jaffna kingdom declared its independence from the crumbling Pandya influence. Around 1334 the Madurai Sultanate was established when governor Jalal ud-Din Hasan Khan declared independence from the Tughluqs. The Pandyas shifted their capital from Madurai to Tenkasi. Even then they did not disappear. Sadaavarman Vikrama Pandya, ruling from 1401 to 1422 AD, and his son Arikesari Parakrama Pandya built 32 forts around Madurai in a bid to reclaim their original capital. The last Pandyan king known to history was Kollankonda, of the Tenkasi line, and the dynasty's final recorded presence ends in 1618 CE.

• 7. Coins, Temples, Architecture

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  The fish symbol appeared on Pandya coins from the earliest period, struck in silver punch-marked and die-struck copper forms. A few gold coins were also attributed to early Pandya rulers. Inscriptions on silver and gold coins used Tamil-Brahmi script, while copper coins bore Tamil legends. Some coins were etched with the names Sundara or Sundara Pandya, or simply the letter "Su." Others bore a boar alongside the legend "Vira-Pandya." Square coins depicted an elephant on one side with the other left blank. Named coin types in the source include "Kodandaraman," "Kanchi Valangum Perumal," "Ellamthalaiyanam," "Samarakolahalam," "Bhuvanekaviram," "Konerirayan," and "Kaliyugaraman," each featuring distinct images of Garuda, a bull, a standing king with a fish, or a pair of feet. In architecture, the Pandyas built on foundations laid by the Pallavas and the Cholas and pushed the Dravidian style in a specific direction: gopuras, the great entrance towers of temple complexes, became extremely large and elaborately decorated under Pandya patronage, capped by barrel vaults. The finest examples of Pandya architecture include the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, the Jambukeswarar Temple in Tiruchirapalli, the Kallalagar temple at Alagar Koyil, and the Nataraja Temple at Chidambaram.