The Pandyas take Vizhinjam

01The Ay port

The Ays ruled the hills and coast of the far south of Kerala, from around Kanyakumari to beyond Thiruvananthapuram, and Vizhinjam was their port and stronghold. The Madras Museum plates of Jatila Parantaka and other Pandya records say that he destroyed Vizhinjam, whose moat was the sea. The Kazhugumalai inscription speaks of the Ay king Karunandan besieged in his fort of Aruviyur. The fighting seems to have run over several seasons.

02A contested coast

Vizhinjam would be fought over again and again. The Ays later accepted Pandya and then Chola overlordship, and Rajaraja Chola’s campaigns of the 990s returned to the same harbour and to nearby Kandalur Salai. Jatila Parantaka himself is also remembered for the Anaimalai cave temple to Narasimha near Madurai, cut by his minister Madhurakavi in 770. The Ay kings themselves remained patrons of learning; the Parthivapuram plates of the Ay king Karunandadakkan, of 866, record a Vedic school set up at the Vishnu temple there on the model of the one at Kandalur.

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 →