the kings of Malayalam today. The wife of the king under the Marumakkal Tayam is never called the Queen. In Pattirruppattu, every, Cera King is praised as the husband of the chaste consort. But this does not help us to decide the issue raised. The Putrakameshti poem, however, conclusively proves, it was the son of the consort that becomes the king, thus establishing beyond doubt the partriarchal succession of these kings. There is one other difficulty, for the Padikam speaks of the mothers of these kings as “velavikoman Pathuman Devi” etc. It is this kind of expression that has really created the confusion. Devi ordinarily means a wife, this phrase will then denote a wife of a Velir chief Pathuman etc. How can the wife of a chief be also wife of the Cera king? This leads some scholars to assume that the succession was matriarchal where the mother of the ruling prince is never the wife of a king. But as this theory runs counter to the explicit statement of the Putra Kameshti poem, one has to explain the word according to Thiru T.V. Sadasiva Pandarathar as meaning “daughter”, a usage made clear by such phrases as Ceran ma Devi, Pancavan ma Devi, all wives of Colas and not a Ceras or Pandyas. Or Ceran ma devi etc., may be an eliptical short hand expression for “The great Cola queen the daughter of the Pandya or Cera.” Names like Sentan Korran or Kiran Korran etc. mean Korran son of Centan or Kiran. Therefore patuman Ma devi may mean the Queen, the daughter of Pathuman. One is justified in referring to the usage of the Imperial Cola Inscriptions in view of the close kingship that exists between the Meykkirtis of the later Colas and the Patikams of Patirruppattu, as explained by Tiru T.V. Sadasiva Pandarathar in his short introduction to the present commentary.

In other places also, the Cera kings are praised in Patirruppattu for bringing forth children. The theory of three debts or duties to the Devas, the ancestors, and the learned, to be discharged respectively, by every man, by performing sacrifices, by bringing forth children, and by learning the ancient texts, is, as seen by this very poem and poem No. 70 as old as the Sangam age. Therefore, when Parimelazhagar speaks of this in his commentary on the chapter on children in Tirukkural, he is not going against any Tamil tradition.