CHAPTER VI.
The Pandyas.
Contemporary with Karikal Chola the Great was the Pandyan king Ariyap-padai-kadantha-Nedunj-Cheliyan “or the Neduuj-Cheliyan who bad defeated an Aryan army.”[1] Some one of the Aryan kings of the Dekkan appears to have invaded the Tamil country during his reign, and the Pandyan king drove back the invaders, inflicting a signal defeat which earned from hhn the title of “Conqueror of the Aryan army.” No particulars whatever of this decisive engagement are to be found in the ancient Tamil works now extant. His memory is however preserved to posterity by his romantic death which is related ih the epic poem Chilapp-athikâram.[2] It is said that he had ordered his palace guards to behead Kovilan, a merchant of Kavirippaddinam, on the suspicion that he had stolen one of the queen’s anklets. But the merchant’s wife Kannaki proved to the satisfaction of the king that the jewel was not the queen’s. Kannaki also spoke to the king of those Chola monarchs of her native country, one of whom had cut off his own flesh to satisfy an eagle, and had saved a dove, and of another king who had killed his own son for having rode in his chariot over a calf and caused its death. The Pandyan king stung with shame and remorse swooned and fell from his throne and never recovered his life. His queen ascended the funeral pyre. One of the verses composed by this king in which he extols the benefits of learning and exhorts his subjects to educate their children is preserved in the anthology called Pura-nauuru.[3] It is as follows :—
“Help your teacher in his need, pay him amply, follow him faithfully, and acquire learning. Amongst her own children, a mother loves not the son who is illiterate. Of the members of the same family, the eldest is not always honored, but it is the wisest of them whose counsel even a king would seek. Of the
