Nedunkilli
| Nedunkilli | |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Karikalan, Karikala Chola |
| Successor | Nalankilli |
| Father | ?Karikala Chola |
Nedunkilli (Tamil: நெடுங்கிள்ளி) was a Tamil king of the Early Cholas mentioned in Sangam Literature. Nedunkilli is mentioned in context with a civil war between him and another Chola Nalankilli. We have no definite details about this Chola or his reign. The only information we have is from the fragmentary poems of Sangam.
The only source available to us on Nedunkilli is the mentions in Sangam poetry. The period covered by the extant literature of the Sangam is unfortunately not easy to determine with any measure of certainty. Except the longer epics Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai, which by common consent belong to the age later than the Sangam age, the poems have reached us in the forms of systematic anthologies. Each individual poem has generally attached to it a colophon on the authorship and subject matter of the poem, the name of the king or chieftain to whom the poem relates and the occasion which called forth the eulogy are also found.
It is from these colophons and rarely from the texts of the poems themselves, that we gather the names of many kings and chieftains and the poets and poetesses patronised by them. The task of reducing these names to an ordered scheme in which the different generations of contemporaries can be marked off one another has not been easy. To add to the confusions, some historians have even denounced these colophons as later additions and untrustworthy as historical documents.
Any attempt at extracting a systematic chronology and data from these poems should be aware of the casual nature of these poems and the wide difference between the purposes of the anthologist who collected these poems and the historian’s attempts are arriving at a continuous history.
Manimekalai embellishes the story of the mortal battle Nedunkilli fought with Nalankilli at Kariyaru. According to Manimekalai, the battle was fought by a junior Chola prince in the reign of Mavankilli, also called Nudumudikilli and Killivalavan. We can infer for this that Nalankilli was the junior prince and was the younger brother of Nedumudikilli. Some of the Purananuru Poems (poem 27) call Nalankilli ‘Setcenni Nalankilli. This suggests the relationship (possibly grandfather-grandson) between Ilamcetcenni, the father of Karikala Chola, and Nalankilli. Nalankilli also had a younger brother Mavalattan (Purananuru – 43). From the above K.A.N. Sastri deduces that Nalankilli, Nedunkilli and Mavalattan were the three sons of Karikala Chola.
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