Three crowned kings

Also called: Vendar, Muvendar, Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas · Topic: Sangam Age and Early South India · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 6 "The Age of Reorganisation"; Class 9, Ch 5 "State and Society up to 1000 CE"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"

Meaning

The Vendar, or "three crowned kings", were the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas. They were the three royal families who ruled the fertile, rice-growing river valleys of Tamilakam (the old Tamil country) in the Sangam age (c. 300 BCE – 300 CE). Each family had its own crown, emblem and capital.

They matter because they show how political power grew in the far south. Rice surplus and sea trade turned some chiefs into kings who collected tax. NCERT says these southern kingdoms "proved to be stable and prosperous".

Explanation

Background: chiefs first, then crowned kings

• NCERT (Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns") uses two different words for early southern rulers: chief and king.
• A chief (head of a chiefdom, a society run by a strong leader and his relatives):
• His post may or may not be hereditary, so a son does not always follow his father.
• His support comes from his kinfolk (his own clan and relatives), not from paid staff.
• He performs rituals, leads men in war and settles disputes.
• He receives gifts from his people and redistributes (gives back out) that wealth to his supporters.

• He has no regular army and no regular officials.

• A king usually collects taxes. A tax is a regular payment that the ruler demands. A gift is something people choose to give.

• The Sangam poems describe both kinds of ruler. The Vendar are the ones who look most like kings.

Main features of the Vendar

• They ruled rice land. Their core areas were the fertile rice-growing river valleys, not the forest edges.
• Wet rice farming produces a surplus (more grain than people need to eat).
• A surplus can be taxed regularly.

• Regular tax pays for crowns, capitals, armies and wars.

• Each family had a royal emblem: Chola = tiger, Chera = bow, Pandya = fish.

• Each family had a capital and core area:

Kingdom	Emblem	Capital / core area	Key facts
Cholas	tiger	lower Kaveri valley	Karikala; Kallanai (Grand Anicut); "rice bowl of the South"
Cheras	bow	Vanji (present-day Karur); western Tamil Nadu and Kerala	Keralaputra; spice trade with the West; patrons of Sangam poets
Pandyas	fish	Madurai; Vaigai–Tamraparni valleys	pearls; noticed by Greek writers; naval power

How each kingdom built its power

• Cholas: control of water
• Karikala is the best-known early Chola chief. He is placed in the late 2nd century CE, and tradition calls him the founder of the dynasty [5].
• He is credited with building a stone dam across the Cauvery [6].
• The Kallanai / Grand Anicut stands where the Kaveri divides. It has worked for about 2,000 years, which makes it India's oldest dam still in use [5][7].

• Whoever controlled the river water controlled the rice surplus, and the surplus paid for kingship.

• Cheras: the sea route to the west

• They are also called Keralaputra ("son of Kerala").
• From the early centuries BCE, Greeks and Romans knew the Chera country for its spices, above all pepper [8].
• So Chera wealth came from the sea as well as from land tax.

• They were major patrons (supporters who pay or protect artists) of Sangam poets, so they appear often in the poems.

• Pandyas: pearls and diplomacy

• They were famous for pearls from the Gulf of Mannar and for their naval power.
• A Pandya ruler sent an embassy (an official mission of envoys) to the Roman emperor Julian around 361 CE [3].
• Madurai was the most important of the three regions for Tamil culture [3].

Results: big ambitions and a long memory

• The chakravarti ideal (one ruler over all of India) reached the far south early (Class 9, Ch 5 "State and Society up to 1000 CE").
• The Chera king Nedunjeral Adan is praised for defeating several crowned kings.
• He won the rank of adhiraja (overlord, a king above other kings).

• He is said to have taken his conquests up to the Himalayas. This is poetic praise and may not be literally true.

• The poems also mention Vedic yajnas (fire sacrifices) performed by Tamil rulers, and links with the epic traditions.

• The three-crown idea lasted a long time. Much later, the Chola emperor Rajaraja I conquered the Pandya kingdom and took the title "mummudi Chola", meaning the Chola who wears the three crowns [4].

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the Sangam age, c. 300 BCE – 300 CE. The Pandyas are older than the poems, because Greek writers mention them as early as the 4th century BCE [3].
• Region: Tamilakam.
• Pandya: Madurai.
• Chera: Malabar Coast and its hinterland (the land behind the coast).

• Chola: Thanjavur and the Kaveri valley [3].

• Key people: Karikala (Chola), Nedunjeral Adan (Chera), and later Rajaraja I, who took the title "mummudi Chola" [4].

• How we know:
• Sangam poems. These are praise poems written for patrons. They describe crowned kings, conquests and gift-giving, but they exaggerate.
• The Silappadikaram. It is set in the three capitals: Pukar (Chola), Maturai (Pandya) and Vanchi (Chera) [2]. Britannica dates the surviving text to the Pallava age, c. 300–900 CE [2]. That is later than the Sangam age, but NCERT still uses it as evidence.
• Inscriptions. Chera inscriptions of the 2nd century CE that name the Irumporai clan were found near Karur. Karur matches Korura, a place named by the Greek geographer Ptolemy [8]. This is rare dated proof, written in stone.

• Greek and Roman accounts. Megasthenes mentions the Pandyas. Roman records mention the Pandya embassy to Julian (c. 361 CE) [3]. Western writers knew the Chera spice trade [8].

• Heritage status: the Grand Anicut (Kallanai) and the farming system of the Cauvery delta are a proposed GIAHS site (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems) of the FAO [7].

Don't confuse with

• Sangam chiefs (chiefdoms): chiefs received gifts and gave them back out, and had no regular army or officials. The Vendar ruled rice valleys, wore crowns and could collect taxes. Note that Britannica calls all three "chiefdoms" [3], while NCERT keeps the two apart.
• Senguttuvan's forest passage: in the Silappadikaram, NCERT calls Senguttuvan a chief who received forest gifts such as ivory, sandalwood, pepper, honey, and even baby tigers and elephants. This passage is NCERT's example of chiefly gift-taking, not of Vendar tax-collecting.
• "Mummudi Chola": this is a title of Rajaraja I of the later imperial Cholas, roughly a thousand years after the Sangam age [4]. It looks back to the three crowns. It is not a Sangam-age title.
• Pukar vs Vanji vs Madurai: Pukar = Chola, Vanji (Karur) = Chera, Madurai = Pandya. Examiners often swap these capitals.

Prelims Hooks

• Emblems: Chola = tiger, Chera = bow, Pandya = fish.
• Vendar = the three crowned kings of Tamilakam: Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas.
• Karikala (Chola, late 2nd century CE) is credited with the stone dam on the Cauvery, the Kallanai / Grand Anicut. It is a proposed FAO GIAHS site [5][6][7].
• Vanji, the Chera capital, is present-day Karur. 2nd-century CE Irumporai inscriptions found there match Ptolemy's Korura [8].
• Nedunjeral Adan (Chera, not Chola) took the rank of adhiraja and is said to have conquered up to the Himalayas.
• Order of foreign notices of the Pandyas: Greek writers, 4th century BCE → embassy to the Roman emperor Julian, c. 361 CE [3].

Mains Points

• Tamilakam shows a change in progress, not a single type of state. Forest and hill zones stayed under chiefs who lived on gifts and kin support. The rice-growing river valleys produced the Vendar, with crowns, emblems, capitals and tax. Use this to argue that state formation in early India took many forms, not only the Magadha model.
• There were two routes to kingship: water and sea.
• The Cholas went inland: the Kaveri, the Kallanai and the rice surplus [5][6][7].
• The Cheras and Pandyas went outward: pepper, pearls, Roman contact and the Pandya embassy to Julian [3][8].

• Both routes produced kingdoms that NCERT calls "stable and prosperous".

• Sources and the debate. Sangam poems are praise poetry, so claims like Nedunjeral Adan's march to the Himalayas are exaggerated. But they can be checked against the Karur inscriptions, Ptolemy's Korura [8] and Greek and Roman notices [3]. A strong answer also notes the debate over labels: Britannica calls the three "chiefdoms" [3], while NCERT calls them crowned kings. The Vendar sat between chiefdom and kingdom. Their claims to be chakravarti, their yajnas and their links with the epics show that the south shared a political language with the north from early on.

Related concepts

• Chiefdom
• Velir

Read more

• Chiefs and kings: the political form of Tamilakam