Āy dynasty

From chieftains to kings

The Āy chiefs appear in Sangam poetry as vēḷir of the Podiyil hill country, patrons of poets and holders of the sandalwood and pepper trade of the southern Ghats. Unlike most Sangam chieftaincies they persisted, and by the early medieval period they were a kingdom with a coastal capital at Vizhinjam, a port south of modern Thiruvananthapuram.

Their territory lay between the Pāṇḍya country to the east and the Chera domains to the north, and their politics consisted largely of managing both.

Later centuries

Āy rulers appear in inscriptions from the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Pāṇḍyas repeatedly attacked Vizhinjam, which controlled the shipping of the southern coast. Karunantadakkan, in the ninth century, is credited with the construction of the temple at Parthivapuram and with a grant establishing a Vedic college there, recorded in a long copper-plate charter.

The dynasty faded in the tenth century and its territory passed to Venad, the principality that grew into the kingdom of Travancore. The Āy line is one of the few threads that can be followed, however unevenly, from the Sangam age into the medieval period.