latter work writes as follows :— 'Between the rivers Kumari and Pahruli there existed an extensive continent occupying an area of 700 kavadams (a Kavadam being equal to ten miles). This land consisting of forty-nine nads (inclusive of Kollam and Kumari), in numerable forests, mountains and rivers had been submerged in the Indian ocean as far as the peaks of Kumari,' by a terrific convulsion which resulted in the upheaval of the Himalayan range. Geological, ethnological and linguistic researches also seem to confirm the above theory. But who can say with any authority whether the submerged country had a town called Madura or Kudal, whether it was governed by precisely eighty-nine Pandya kings, or whether the Dravidian inhabitants of this terra incognita were so far civilized as to establish literary academies? What seems to be reasonable is that the Madura of Agastyar's days must have been destroyed by an unusual inundation of the Vaiga and the Kritamal rivers, before the modern town was built at the present locality. The old Madura must have situated five or six miles south or south-east of the later one, and about the same distance east of Tirupparamkunram hill which has been described to have situated exactly west of it;
மாடமலி மறுகிற் கூடற்குடவயின்.—Nak.
This hill is now four miles south-west of Madura. And it is for the above reason that the old city was called the south or Dakshina Madura.
About the second academy the same authority 16
