PANDYA, a kingdom in the south of the Peninsula of India, supposed to have been founded five or six centuries before the Christian era. Their first capitals seem to have been Kukht near Ramnad, the Kolkhi of the Periplus, and Kal yana near Cape Comorin. Up to the rise of the great Chola dynasty in the 10th and 11th centuries, the Pandya dynasty seems to have had a long career of prosperity and power. After that, for a while, they appear to have been subject to the Bellala dynasty of Mysore, but they had had several epochs of great brilliancy and power. Augustus, emperor of Home, when at Antioch, received an embassy with letters from king Pandyon of ancient Dravida. Thu gave valuable and curious presents, amongst others a man without arms, and a serpent ten cubits long. In the letter, the king described himself as holding sway over six hundred kings, and he asked the friendship of Augustus. In the embassy was an Indian named Zarmanochegua, from Mango= or Broach, who accompanied Augustus to Athens, and there, as Calanus had done, committed self immolation before the emperor. His tomb, known as the Indian's tomb, was to be seen as late as Plutareh's time. Their country, Pandya (1lissdocis of Megasthenes), Pandi Mandela of the Periplus, Pandionis Mediterranea. and Madura flegia Pan dionis of Ptolemy, was one of three ancient divisions of the Dravida country of Southern India, the other two being Chola and Chem. And an early legend runs that the three kingdoms were founded by three brothers. Pandya king dom seems to have been founded in the 5th century n.c. by Pandya, a person of the agri cultural class.
Strabo mentions an ambassador from king Pandion to Augustus Cesar, and, from the Peri plus and Ptolemy, Pandion seems to have been the hereditary appellation of the descendants of Pandya. Ptolemy notices Pandion, and the author of the Periplus of the Erythrman Sea mentions Comari (Comorin) and other places as under a king Pandion. At the time of the Periplus the princi pality extended to the Malabar coast, but in general the ghats formed the western limit of the kingdom, which occupied what are now the revenue districts of Madura and Tinnevelly. Tho
seat of government, after being twice changed, was fixed at Madura, where it was in the time of Ptolemy, and where it remained till the early part of the 18th century (A.D. 1736). Their waist and rivalries were with the adjoining kingdom of Chola, with which they seem, in the first centuries of the Christian era, to have formed a union which lasted some time. They, however, resumed their separate sovereignty, and were a considerable state until the 9th century, when they lost their consequence, and were often tributary, though sometimes quite independent., till it ended under the Nai• dynasty, which was conquered by the Nawab of Arcot, A.D. 1736. A wall is said to mark the boundary between the Chola and Pandya kingdoms in Madura, remains of which have been traced near Rainagiri, the Cuddanags of Coorg, etc. Professor Wilson supposes the appearance of Pandya as an organized state and the foundation of Madura to have happened n.c. 500. At the beginning of the Christian era, the Pandya dynasty seems to have held sway over the greater part of the southern portion of the Peninsula on the Coromandel coast, westward to Canara and Malabar, and southward to the sea. Adi lira reigned about the year 1040. lie was a literary prince, and some of his aphorisms are in common circulation in a small collection called Petty tier. kay. Pandya is still the general term used in Travancore for the Madras revenue districts of Tinnevelly and Madura. Chola with Tanjore, and Chera with Salem, known as Kerala, comprised the tract from Gokarna in N. Canara to Cape Comorin. The fish was the ensign of the Pandyan dynasty, who were thence called Alinavar (Alin, TAM., a fish), and their standard Minkodi.
Two embassies were sent by the Pandyan king to Augustus, the first of which he received at Tarragona, the second is mentioned by Strabo. The friendship of the Romans was sought by only one other Hindu prince, 0 Kerobothros, the king of Chera or Kerala, who also was a Dravidian.