76 following the law of Makkal Tayam or patriarchal succes'sion, as their colleagues the Colas and the Pandyas did, or were following the law of Marumakkal Tayam, as followed by the kings of Malayalam today. The wife of the King under the Marumakkal Tayam is never called the Queen. In Patirruppattu, 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 patriarchal succession of these Kings. There is one other difficulty, for the Patikam 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 accerding 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 of ceras or Pandyas. Or Ceran Ma Devi etc. may be an ellipticral 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 Madevi 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 kinship that exists between the Meykkirtis
