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176
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1915
In A, D. 1293 this Dewar died. (This was the Sundara Pandya whose accession took place in A. D. 1276). He was succeeded by a brother. Seventeen years later (A.D. 1310) the king was "Kalesa " (Kulašêkhara) and he was murdered by his son, etc. ..
The obvious meaning of these passages is that there was one, and one only, king of the Pandya country at the time mentioned, but that certain brothers of the king had set. themselves up against him and attempted to establish their independence. If there had always been a joint-rule of five co-regents the story would have been told in a different way.
Marco Polo, who was only a visitor, certainly alludes to the Five-brother legend, but his description of what he calls the “ Province" of "Ma'abar", equally with Wassáf's, shows that by that name he understood the whole of east coast to belong to the Pandya. He speaks of it12 as "the great province of Ma'abar, which is called India the greater." After saying "you must know that in this province are five kings who are brothers" he tells us that "at the end of this Province reigns one of those five Royal Brothers, who is a crowned king, and his name is Sonder Bandi Davar". Read without prejudice we should understand by this that the Paodya realm proper (the " end of the province ") was under the rule of one crowned king, Sundara Pandya, whose brothers, (in number four according to the old legend of which he had evidently been told) had established themselves independently in other tracts. Wassåf's Pandya brethren were, in number, four in all ; Marco Polo, acquainted with the ancient story, confused the remote past with the present, and wrote of the "five kings who were brothers". Wassâf, a Muhammadan, a contemporary of the Pandya king's Muhammadan minister, and a resident in the country, was incomparably the better witness of the two; and he tells us that, during the confusion of the time the king's three brothers had made themselves independent. In this there is nothing unusual. [That Marco Polo included the old Chola dominions in Mala bar is plain from his Chapter XVII wherein he describes the tract about the city of Madras as included in it. He treats of "the place where St. Thomas is--I mean where his body lies—which is in a certain city of the province of Malabar ", and so also in Chapter XVIII.)
It seems from Colonel Yule's treatise (note to Book III, Chap. XVI.) that the “ Five Pandya" legend had penetrated even to China. He tells us that Pauthier's work (which I have not seen) gives extracts from Chinese sources shewing that in A. D. 1280 or later there were five brothers who were Sultans" in Malabar.
Outside the scope of local inscriptions the above seems to be the only evidence in favour of a joint-rule of five Pandyas, and it only concerns one period of a few years towards the end of the thirteenth century. Only the strangers, Marco Polo and the Chinese author, give the number five. The Muhammadan historians of the time mention only four brothers, three of them in opposition to the king. No inscription of Southern Indis ever alludes to any government by a co-regency, an inconceivable state of things if the government during the thirteenth century had always been as Mr. Swamikannu Pillai supposes. The statement of the Mahavansa stands practically alone, and can be accounted for by the fact that that chronicle was written in verse and not in prose.
I think, therefore, that we must hold the evidence to be overwhelmingly in favour of a single monarchy, and that the theory of a co-regency of five kings may be altogether set aside. Such a theory presupposes a most improbable state of things and the evidence in its favour is practically nil.
With the above by way of introduction I proceed to give in some detail the results of my examination of Mr. Swamikannu Pillai's published dates of Pandya kinge; taking them sovereign by sovereign in the order given by him.
(To be continued.) 12 (Yuld's Edition 1903, 11. 331; Bk. 111, Ch; XVI.)
