Arulmozhi Varman's Disappearance at Sea is the crisis set in motion when the prince leapt into rough waters to save Vandhiyathevan and was subsequently believed drowned. His absence became more than a question of survival: in a kingdom already divided by political rivalries, uncertain reports turned the missing prince into a focus for public grief, accusation, and competing claims about who was responsible. The later disclosure that a boat-girl rescued both men overturns the presumption of death, but does not undo the turmoil that the report had caused.

The plunge and the unanswered return

The account that eventually emerges is precise about the danger and purpose of the prince's action. Arulmozhi Varman had been travelling from Ilankai aboard a Pallava vessel under Parthibendra Pallava's escort. When a ship was burning and Vandhiyathevan was in danger, the prince plunged into the churning sea to save his companion. Parthibendra Pallava, who had been entrusted with bringing the prince safely home, did not prevent the leap. The prince's choice therefore becomes the centre of a dispute over courage, friendship, and responsibility: he endangered himself for another man, while the escort's failure to protect him became an accusation with political force.

At first, however, the rescue is not known. Arulmozhi Varman vanishes from the account of the voyage, and his absence is treated as possible death. The distinction between what happened and what people can verify is crucial. His plunge is later described as voluntary, but the immediate public story is simply that he has drowned. In a conversation about the journey to Kadambur, even those who regard survival as possible admit that the news has thrown Chozha Nadu into turmoil and distressed the prince's parents. One speaker imagines that Arulmozhi Varman might have been washed ashore on an island and could still return; this remains a hope, not confirmed information.

Rumour becomes a political crisis

The report of the prince's drowning spreads into a landscape of existing factional conflict. People in Kadambur hear that Chozha Nadu is unsettled and that hostilities may break out between the Pazhuvettarayar faction and Kodumbalur Velaar. The lords are assembling at Kadambur Palace in the name of preventing war, and Aditha Karikalan is among those expected there. The prince's disappearance thus shadows a political gathering whose stakes already include military power and royal succession. In the market street, celebratory preparations for the arriving dignitaries sit uneasily beside muted talk of the drowned prince. Some townspeople consider the festivities ill-judged in the face of such a loss, but express their disapproval only indirectly.

The uncertainty also produces incompatible versions of how Arulmozhi Varman came to be lost. One rumour blames the Pazhuvettarayar lords, alleging that they forced the prince aboard their ship and thereby caused his drowning. Aniruddhar later explains that this report acquired wide circulation after the prince's imprisonment was supposedly ordered, and that people had become angry with the Pazhuvoor lords. Sundara Chozhar rejects that account after hearing Parthibendra Pallava's version: the prince had never been on a Pazhuvettarayar ship, but travelled on the Pallava vessel and entered the sea of his own accord. The competing stories transform incomplete knowledge into political blame, making the disappearance consequential even while its circumstances remain disputed.

The accusation against Parthibendra Pallava

When Parthibendra Pallava and Vandhiyathevan confront one another, the disappearance becomes personal as well as political. Parthibendra Pallava points to the prince's plunge as evidence against Vandhiyathevan: Arulmozhi Varman risked the sea to save him, while Vandhiyathevan has returned apparently unharmed and the prince has not. He asks what became of the prince and implies that Vandhiyathevan may bear responsibility for his loss.

Vandhiyathevan turns the charge back on the escort. Arulmozhi Varman, he argues, valued his elder brother's wishes above the counsel of Aniruddhar and the military commander who had urged him to remain in Ilankai. Parthibendra Pallava had nevertheless taken responsibility for bringing him home. Vandhiyathevan asks why the Pallava prince failed to protect his royal charge, why he stood by while Arulmozhi Varman entered the sea, and why he and his men did not stop the waters from taking him. The argument does not establish what Parthibendra Pallava could have done or resolve the question of blame; it exposes how the prince's disappearance has made loyalty itself subject to suspicion.

Aditha Karikalan interrupts the quarrel before it can become a fight. He orders Parthibendra Pallava and Kandamaaran to ride ahead while he hears Vandhiyathevan's account and weighs the accusations, insisting that resentment among his companions must not continue. In this scene the missing prince exerts force through absence: his rescue of Vandhiyathevan has bound the two men's fates together, while the lack of a confirmed outcome turns that bond into a contest of accusation. Aditha Karikalan's decision is not a verdict on the sea incident; it is an attempt to keep uncertainty from further dividing his companions.

Rescue and retrospective correction

The decisive correction comes when Aniruddhar explains that the boat-girl who rescued Arulmozhi Varman and his companion and brought them ashore is in the adjoining room. She had witnessed what happened in Ilankai. Sundara Chozhar, who had just heard the account that his son jumped into the sea, immediately asks for her to be brought in. Aniruddhar confirms that she is the woman who travelled to the palace in a Pazhuvettarayar palanquin. Her presence supplies the personal witness missing from the rumours: the prince did not simply disappear beneath the sea, and Vandhiyathevan was rescued with him.

This revelation distinguishes the physical event from its political afterlife. Arulmozhi Varman's plunge was a perilous attempt to save a friend; his subsequent absence generated a presumed drowning, public alarm, and rival narratives of culpability. Once the rescue is disclosed, the belief in his death is corrected, but the episode remains consequential because reports of it have already inflamed distrust toward the Pazhuvoor lords and intensified the kingdom's instability. The sea has separated the prince from those awaiting his return without, as the later testimony establishes, ending his life. The delay between that rescue and its confirmation is what allows a survival story to function first as a national crisis.