Jaṭilavarman Arikesari Parākrama (1422-1463 CE) is one of the foremost monarchs of the later phase of the Pāṇḍya dynasty, ruling from an ‘exiled’ kingdom in the Tirunelveli district (Tamil Nadu). His reign marked the apogee and the splendour of the 15th-century Pāṇḍya court, despite the undisputed dominion of the Vijayanagara Empire (1336-1565) in the South. The sovereign is acknowledged to have built the majestic complex of the Kāśīviśvanātar temple in Teṅkāśī; its building circumstances and phases are testified to by three important Tamil inscriptions. In the epigraphical narrative, Śiva appeared in a dream to the King and commanded to build for him a new house in the Tamil land. The same episode is retold by a 16th- century Sanskrit mahākāvya, the Pāṇḍyakulodaya, authored by Maṇḍalakavi. In this ‘historical’ poem, the author sensibly modified the narrative sequence, charging the event and Arikesari’s action with a completely different value than the inscriptions, which are so centred on the divine intervention.

The lecture is devoted to the analysis of this little-studied textual evidence and the comparison between the primary sources. The study of these passages will enlighten significant changes in the traditional asset of the royal patronage and the so-called ‘gifts of power’, as theorised by James Heitzman. This focal point will also allow to offer considerations about the revolutionary transition in the concept of Pāṇḍya (and Indian) kingship and its portraiture in the 16th century, marked by the rise of a new ideological idiom expressed by Maṇḍalakavi in his mahākāvya.