Malik-I 'Azam Taki-Uddin Continued Prime
Minister As Before, And In Fact Ruler Of That Kingdom, And His Glory And
Magnificence Were Raised A Thousand Times Higher."[3]
Seventeen years later (1310) Wassaf introduces another king of Ma'bar
called Kalesa Devar, who had ruled for forty years
In prosperity, and
had accumulated in the treasury of Shahr-Mandi (i.e., as Dr. Caldwell
informs me MADURA, entitled by the Mahomedan invaders Shahr-Pandi, and
still occasionally mispronounced Shahr-Mandi) 1200 crores (!) in gold.
He had two sons, SUNDAR BANDI by a lawful wife, and Pirabandi (Vira
Pandi?) illegitimate. He designated the latter as his successor. Sundar
Bandi, enraged at this, slew his father and took forcible possession of
Shahr-Mandi and its treasures. Pirabandi succeeded in driving him out;
Sundar Bandi went to Alauddin, Sultan of Delhi, and sought help. The
Sultan eventually sent his general Hazardinari (alias Malik Kafur) to
conquer Ma'bar.
In the third volume of Elliot we find some of the same main facts, with
some differences and greater detail, as recounted by Amir Khusru. Bir
Pandiya and Sundara Pandiya are the Rais of Ma'bar, and are at war with
one another, when the army of Alauddin, after reducing Bilal Deo of Dwara
Samudra, descends upon Ma'bar in the beginning of 1311 (p. 87 seqq.).
We see here two rulers in Ma'bar, within less than twenty years, bearing
the name of Sundara Pandi. And, strange to say, more than a century
before, during the continental wars of Parakrama Bahu I., the most martial
of Singhalese kings (A.D. 1153-1186), we find another Kulasaikera (=
Kalesa of Wassaf), King of Madura, with another Vira Pandi for son,
and another Sundara Pandi Raja, figuring in the history of the
Pandionis Regio. But let no one rashly imagine that there is a confusion
in the chronology here. The Hindu Chronology of the continental states is
dark and confused enough, but not that of Ceylon, which in this, as in
sundry other respects, comes under Indo-Chinese rather than Indian
analogies. (See Turnour's Ceylonese Epitome, pp. 41-43; and J.A.S.B.
XLI. Pt. I. p. 197 seqq.)
In a note with which Dr. Caldwell favoured me some time before the first
publication of this work, he considers that the Sundar Bandi of Polo and
the Persian Historians is undoubtedly to be identified with that Sundara
Pandi Devar, who is in the Tamul Catalogues the last king of the ancient
Pandya line, and who was (says Dr. Caldwell,) "succeeded by Mahomedans, by
a new line of Pandyas, by the Nayak Kings, by the Nabobs of Arcot, and
finally by the English. He became for a time a Jaina, but was reconverted
to the worship of Siva, when his name was changed from Kun or Kubja,
'Crook-backed,' to Sundara, 'Beautiful,' in accordance with a change
which then took place, the Saivas say, in his personal appearance.
Probably his name, from the beginning, was Sundara.... In the inscriptions
belonging to the period of his reign he is invariably represented, not as
a joint king or viceroy, but as an absolute monarch ruling over an
extensive tract of country, including the Chola country or Tanjore, and
Conjeveram, and as the only possessor for the time being of the title
Pandi Devar.
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