Arulmozhi Varman’s rescue after the shipwreck reverses a disappearance that had become a political crisis: he is alive and safe in a Buddhist viharam at Nagapattinam, but his survival is initially kept from public view while the struggle over the Chozha succession remains unresolved. The episode distinguishes the facts of his rescue from the rumors that gathered around his disappearance, and makes concealment a deliberate question of political safety rather than proof of death.

Storm and uncertainty

The news of Arulmozhi Varman’s apparent drowning had already unsettled Chozha Nadu. Reports of turmoil and the prospect of conflict between the Pazhuvettarayar faction and the Kodumbalur Velaar made the prince’s absence more than a private bereavement: his uncertain fate sharpened an existing crisis over power and succession. In Kadambur, market-goers spoke in muted terms of the drowned prince even as preparations celebrated the expected arrival of Aditha Karikalan and other important visitors. Public celebration and private unease coexisted because reliable information about the prince was lacking.

The rescue is disclosed amid a separate, devastating storm. The monsoon had arrived late; rivers were thinning and newly planted fields were wilting before gloomy clouds gathered and a brief drizzle swelled into a violent downpour. The cyclone’s effects extended beyond the immediate weather: a huge banyan tree was uprooted, trapping horses and men beneath its branches, while rescuers worked to free them. In Thanjavur, the storm also shaped the court’s immediate priorities. Kundhavai told Aniruddhar that her father, Sundara Chozhar, was deeply troubled by the hardship endured by people in flimsy shelters and had sent her to seek relief for those affected.

The rescue and the facts of the shipwreck

Kundhavai revealed that Arulmozhi Varman had not been taken by the sea. She reported that Samudhra Rajan had saved him and brought him safely to shore, and that the prince was then living in the safety of a Buddhist viharam at Nagapattinam. She added that this was why she had gone there to meet him. The rescue thus changed the meaning of his absence: what had been treated across the kingdom as a death was instead a survival followed by deliberate seclusion.

The account later supplied to Sundara Chozhar clarifies how the prince entered the sea. Arulmozhi Varman had travelled aboard a Pallava vessel, not a ship belonging to Pazhuvettarayar. He jumped into the choppy water of his own accord, trying to save someone from a burning ship, despite Parthibendra Pallavan’s efforts to restrain him. The boat-girl who rescued the prince and his companion and brought them ashore was Poonguzhali. She had witnessed what happened in Ilankai and was nearby when Aniruddhar offered to bring her before the emperor as a witness.

Concealment as a political decision

Kundhavai proposed sending Poonguzhali back to Nagapattinam, subject to Aniruddhar’s approval. Aniruddhar advised against bringing Arulmozhi Varman into public view until the question of the Chozha throne had been decided. If Madhuranthakan were chosen as successor, he warned, Arulmozhi Varman’s presence nearby could prompt opposition and turn the kingdom into a battlefield. In that case, he said, the prince might have to be sent to Eelam again. Aniruddhar also allowed for a different possibility: if Sundara Chozhar wished, Arulmozhi Varman could come to Thanjavur incognito. These were proposed courses of action, not a report that either had already been carried out.

The decision to conceal the prince therefore carried a double edge. It kept him safe from public exposure during a dangerous succession dispute, but it also prolonged the gap between what the court knew and what the kingdom believed. Kundhavai had come to see the cost of withholding the truth: she told Aniruddhar that concealing facts could bring devastation, and linked that lesson to the consequences she feared from keeping her brother hidden. His safety and the political effects of revealing him could not easily be separated.

Rumors, blame, and recognition

With the prince’s fate uncertain, competing accounts became politically consequential. Aniruddhar told Sundara Chozhar that he had urged caution about keeping Arulmozhi Varman away from Chozha Nadu, but that reports of a plan to imprison the prince had spread. People consequently accused the Pazhuvoor lords of forcing him aboard their ship and causing his drowning. The emperor rejected that version, explaining that the prince had been aboard the Pallava vessel and had entered the sea voluntarily in an attempt to rescue someone.

Aniruddhar then identified Poonguzhali as the rescuer and as a witness to the events in Ilankai. Sundara Chozhar asked for her to be brought in, recognizing her as the woman who had travelled in the Pazhuvoor palanquin. The revelation turns the report of survival into something that can be tested by testimony, even as the prince himself remains concealed. The event’s decisive reversal is therefore not merely that Arulmozhi Varman escaped drowning: the presumed death is exposed as false, the story of the ship and the rescue is corrected, and the court must confront the political consequences of deciding when that truth can safely be made public.