The Pandya conquest of Kongu

01The campaign

The Velvikudi plates say that Nedunjadaiyan defeated the Adigaiman at Pugaliyur, though the chief had the support of the Keralas and the Pallavas, and took the Kongu land. The Adigaimans of Tagadur were an old family, remembered in Sangam poetry through Adigaiman Anji, the patron of the poetess Avvaiyar. Other Pandya records speak of the king’s march to the Kaveri and his worship at temples in the newly won country.

02Why Kongu mattered

Kongu lay on the routes from the Tamil plains to Karnataka and through the Palghat gap to Kerala. Holding it put the Pandyas in touch with the Western Gangas and the Cheras, and flanked the Pallavas. Under Nedunjadaiyan the Pandya kingdom reached its widest extent of the early period, from the Ay country in the south to Kongu and the Kaveri in the north. His son Rajasimha II and grandson Varaguna I kept this frontier for another generation.

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 →