Nadu Nadu is the river-bounded region between the Kedilam and Then Pennai, presented as both a strategic corridor and a landscape whose agricultural fortunes were bound to water. Its importance emerges through the convergence of roads, sacred places, military ambition, and irrigation: the same open territory that could accommodate immense armies was also made more productive through royal waterworks.

Setting and Routes

The Kedilam held a prominent place among the rivers that enriched Thirumunaippaadi Nadu. Near its banks stood the shrine associated with Appar’s union with the deity of Thiruvathigai Veerattaanam; nearby, at Thirunaavalur, a deity was said to have turned Sundaramurthy Naayanar away from material advancement and toward spiritual life. Between these sacred sites, a royal road from Thondai Mandalam wound toward Chozha Nadu and Nadu Nadu. The river crossing on that road was a busy stopping place, where travelers rested and released their bulls from harness while birds, crows, fish, and playing children filled the banks with activity.

That ordinary bustle could be amplified by the river itself. In Aippasi, the Kedilam rose in exceptionally heavy floods; the crowded noon picnics on its banks became more animated still before a distant roar on the road abruptly drew people’s attention. The scene establishes a landscape where river conditions and movement along the road shaped everyday life, even as the surrounding religious sites gave the same route a sacred geography.

A Strategic Assembly Ground

Nadu Nadu’s position between the Kedilam and Then Pennai made it suitable for gathering and training an army on a scale required for a northern invasion. Rajadithyar’s ambition was to destroy Rettai Mandalam’s Kannara Thevan and raze Manyakhedam, inspired by the earlier Pallava campaign against Vathapi. The account contrasts the seven years Maamallar had taken to assemble his forces with Rajadithyar’s confidence that three or four would suffice, and identifies the river plain as the ground on which such preparations could be made.

The remembered encampments convey the campaign’s scale. Rajadithyar stationed thirty thousand men at Thirunaavalur; the Chera king Vellan Kumaran had twenty thousand warriors at Mudiyur on the Pennai banks; and the speaker’s force, together with Aditha’s grandfather Arinjayan, mustered about fifty thousand at Thirukkovilur. Kodumbalur Periya Velaan, Pazhuvettarayar, Sambuvaraiyar, and other regional lords also camped between the rivers with their respective armies, alongside three Kaikkola regiments.

The forces rehearsed through mock battles rather than remaining idle in camp. Elephants collided, cavalry clashed, and training volleys of arrows darkened the sky; the warriors’ cries and the spectacle of the exercises drew enormous crowds. The account makes the region’s strategic value tangible: its open ground served not only as a route toward the northern enemy but as a public stage for the preparation of war.

Waterworks and Agricultural Change

Military mobilization imposed a cost on cultivation in Thirumunaippaadi and Nadu Nadu. Their citizens are described as accepting considerable hindrance to farming while the armies assembled, and Rajadithyar responded by ordering the construction of several large lakes in the two regions. He also arranged for water from the Kollidam to reach Veera Narayanapuram Lake through a newly made river. The works joined political power to material provision: royal authority answered the disruption of military preparation with an investment in water storage and supply.

The account singles out Sambuvaraiyar as a major beneficiary of the increased natural bounty. His present wealth and conceit are contrasted with his earlier deference to Rajadithyar, whom he had once approached in a posture of submission. The contrast gives the waterworks a political afterlife: improvements to the land could enrich local elites as well as aid cultivation, and the resulting prosperity could alter relations between a ruler and the lords who benefited from his largesse.

Water, Weather, and Regional Vulnerability

The book’s later descriptions of weather place the region’s prosperity against a wider dependence on uncertain rainfall. In one dry spell, the monsoon was late, the Kaveri and its sister rivers had grown markedly slimmer, and newly planted saplings wilted under the sun. A sudden storm then gathered in the northeast: dark clouds crowded the sky, cutting wind drove the rain, and a light drizzle became a downpour within a quarter of a naazhigai. The passage does not identify these particular effects as damage in Nadu Nadu, but it underscores the fragility of the agricultural world in which the river-bounded region is situated.

The storm’s consequences elsewhere in the Chola country turn weather into a question of public responsibility. A huge banyan tree was uprooted beside a mandapam, trapping two horses and five or six men beneath its broken branches as rescuers tried to free them. At court, Kundhavai reported that the cyclone had left Sundara Chozhar deeply troubled by the poor enduring rain and deprivation in flimsy huts, and that he wanted aid sent to them. Aniruddhar warned that the destruction across Chozha Nadu remained uncertain while reports were still awaited, but relayed alarming news of the sea surging inland and submerging towns from Kodikkarai to Naagai. Against these episodes, Nadu Nadu’s lakes and riverworks register as more than instruments of cultivation: they belong to a broader struggle to make settled life possible amid both seasonal scarcity and destructive excess.