Kadungon ends Kalabhra rule

01The Velvikudi grant

The source is the Velvikudi copper plates issued by the Pandya Nedunjadaiyan in the eighth century. They tell how a Brahmin village at Velvikudi, granted by an early Pandya king, was seized when the Kalabhra king overran the land and drove out the many great kings. Then Kadungon rose, like the sun from the eastern sea, destroyed the Kalabhras and took back the earth. The grant was restored generations later on the strength of that history.

02The Kalabhra interval

Who the Kalabhras were is still argued. They left few records of their own, and Tamil literature remembers them mainly through the complaint of the Velvikudi plates. Some link them with patrons of Jain and Buddhist learning in the period. In the north of the Tamil country the Pallava Simhavishnu ended their power at about the same time. Between Kadungon and Simhavishnu the age of the great Tamil temple kingdoms began.

Dynasty · c. 4th century BCE – late 16th century CEPandya dynastyThe Pandyas ruled from Madurai for close to two thousand years, longer than almost any house in the world. Megasthenes and Ashoka knew them; they broke the Kalabhras in the 6th century, lost Madurai to the Cholas in the 10th, and under Jatavarman Sundara Pandya in the 13th century became the strongest power in the south.Read →