the peak of the cholas was during rrc and his son's reign the pandyas we are told were eliminated in the naadu and lived in the kaadu. but rrc marries minavan mathevi a pandya princess, and during rajendrans time an alliance of sundara sola and sinhalese is present( vengaiyin mainthan) and quite capable of causing disturbances.
was a dummy pandya government set up by the cholas in madurai? any info on that.
5o years is a long time for a freedom movement to survive ( even for the pandyas)
Dear Venkat The main reason that there was so much resistance from Pandyas was the Rathina Haaram and Manimudi which was only retrived during Rajendras regime after crowning one of his sos as Chola Pandiyan things were quiyt till the Pandyan heirs accepted the Chola overlordship nad were local kings under the grand chola empire till the time of sundara pandyan
Sure royals are masters of survival, or rather to any royal throne active or extinct there will always be couple of claimants - even today.
The last chola claimant I heard about was in late 1800s - one Andiyapadevar of Pichavaram, this reference is in one of the publications of Chidambaram thala varalaaru.
Pandya are very proficient survivors, they survived Kalabhras more successfully than chozha, then you said, every chozha emperor had couple of Pandya princes formenting trouble for him. Then came the revival and zenith under Jatavarman Sundaran and the decay of fraticides, regicides with the warring princes inviting trouble from Sinhala and also muslims, Madurai sultante drove them down to Tenkasi, slowly towards south and west they migrate, - AdiveeraramPandyan etc, Then "Madura Vijayam" happened and the Pandyan remnants fought against Vijayanagar and then nayaks and slowly fragmented into being minor rulers and zamindars.
There is one religious angle to this: Iyyapa Sastha. To mix fact fiction myth and legend
Sastha is a traditional deity in Thenpandiseemai. The later Pandyan cheiftains took him as their gaurdian deity, one such was the Pandian principality of Pandalam, where a child borne under under unusual circumstances into the royal house and who grew up to perform wonderous feat of saving the neighbourhood from the forest peril was merged into the Godhead of Sashtha and revered as hariharasudha.
Such is a very common occurance in S.India be it Annanmaar Ponnar- Shankar or Iyyapa shastha