Seventeen years later (1310) Wassaf introduces another king of Ma’bar called Kalesa Devar, who had ruled for forty years in prosperity, and had accumulated in the treasury of Shahr-Mandi (i.e., as Dr. Caldwell informs me MADURA, entitled by the Mahomedan invaders Shahr-Pandi, and still occasionally mispronounced Shahr-Mandi) 1200 crores (!) in gold.  He had two sons, SUNDAR BANDI by a lawful wife, and Pirabandi (Vira Pandi?) illegitimate.  He designated the latter as his successor.  Sundar Bandi, enraged at this, slew his father and took forcible possession of Shahr-Mandi and its treasures.  Pirabandi succeeded in driving him out; Sundar Bandi went to Alauddin, Sultan of Delhi, and sought help.  The Sultan eventually sent his general Hazardinari (alias Malik Kafur) to conquer Ma’bar.

In the third volume of Elliot we find some of the same main facts, with some differences and greater detail, as recounted by Amir Khusru.  Bir Pandiya and Sundara Pandiya are the Rais of Ma’bar, and are at war with one another, when the army of Alauddin, after reducing Bilal Deo of Dwara Samudra, descends upon Ma’bar in the beginning of 1311 (p. 87 seqq.).

We see here two rulers in Ma’bar, within less than twenty years, bearing the name of Sundara Pandi.  And, strange to say, more than a century before, during the continental wars of Parakrama Bahu I., the most martial of Singhalese kings (A.D. 1153-1186), we find another Kulasaikera (= Kalesa of Wassaf), King of Madura, with another Vira Pandi for son, and another Sundara Pandi Raja, figuring in the history of the Pandionis Regio.  But let no one rashly imagine that there is a confusion in the chronology here.  The Hindu Chronology of the continental states is dark and confused enough, but not that of Ceylon, which in this, as in sundry other respects, comes under Indo-Chinese rather than Indian analogies. (See Turnour’s Ceylonese Epitome, pp. 41-43; and J.A.S.B. XLI.  Pt.  I. p. 197 seqq.)

In a note with which Dr. Caldwell favoured me some time before the first publication of this work, he considers that the Sundar Bandi of Polo and the Persian Historians is undoubtedly to be identified with that Sundara Pandi Devar, who is in the Tamul Catalogues the last king of the ancient Pandya line, and who was (says Dr. Caldwell,) “succeeded by Mahomedans, by a new line of Pandyas, by the Nayak Kings, by the Nabobs of Arcot, and finally by the English.  He became for a time a Jaina, but was reconverted to the worship of Siva, when his name was changed from Kun or Kubja, ‘Crook-backed,’ to Sundara, ‘Beautiful,’ in accordance with a change which then took place, the Saivas say, in his personal appearance.  Probably his name, from the beginning, was Sundara....  In the inscriptions belonging to the period of his reign he is invariably represented, not as a joint king or viceroy, but as an absolute monarch ruling over an extensive tract of country, including the Chola country or Tanjore, and Conjeveram, and as the only possessor for the time being of the title Pandi Devar.  It is clear from the agreement of Rashiduddin with Marco Polo that Sundara Pandi’s power was shared in some way with his brothers, but it seems certain also from the inscription that there was a sense in which he alone was king.”