I would like to add my points regarding your statements.
>>It is common today to find many people in the south TN (Tenkasi, Thirunelveli etc) with the family >> name of Pandian. Probably offshoots of the older lines.
Not all of them really. Many of them assumed names that too recently i.ewithin 100 years. I am afraid it became a cold war between 2-3 castes to prove that they were the real Pandiyas.
>> matrilineal primogeniture was practiced in Ancient Egypt, which again is quite irrelevant in this >> context anyway!
I could not help but adding the point here. In the book 'Thamizhnattu PorkkaLangaL' a poet-researcher Appadurai has registered that Egyptians refer to a port called Ovir and a country called 'Pand and they claim it as their motherland. He had equated this to 'Uvari' and Pandiya kingdom. Uvari was once a major port-town of the Pandiyas. Could not confirm about the validity of the information though.