written records, and is alike fatal to the extreme antiquity of the events which they narrate. The meagreness and inconsistency of the various sources of information might throw a suspicion upon the existence of the Pandya monarchy at any remote period, did not classical writers bear testimony to the celebrity even of its capital city, at the very commencement of our era. How long before this it was founded we have scarcely any means of conjecturing, but the traditional history of the Chola dynasty records the disappearance of that race, as independent princes, to have occurred in consequence of the marriage of a Chola princess with Vara-guna Pandyan, whom it calls the forty-eighth Pandya king. In our lists, however, he appears to have been the twenty-second or twenty-ninth, and supposing the union of the Chola and Pandya sovereignties to have been thus effected before the reign of Augustus, and the number of preceding reigns not very erroneous, we may conjecture the appearance of the Pandya principality as an organised state, and the foundation of Madura to have happened, about five or six centuries anterior to the Christian era.[1] Of the events that have befallen the kingdom during the long period that has since elapsed, very few are attributed to remote times, and of them the authenticity may be doubted. Such as they are found, however, in the only records that remain we shall proceed to detail them, omitting the most extravagant fictions, and curtailing the most tedious of those which we select.[2]
- ↑ It is not improbable that some centuries preceded the foundation of Madura, during which the first settlers were occupied in clearing the ground and erecting habitations, and forming themselves into organized states. According to the Puránas, as estimated by Hamilton, ten centuries were thus occupied; but this seems to be more than requisite, and perhaps five would be nearer the truth, placing the first establishments in the south about one thousand years before our era.
- ↑ The authority followed in the first part of the ensuing detail is called a translation of the Madura Purána (List of Authorities, No. 7); it appears to be a translation of the Tamil work called Tiruralaiyádal, which is also designated sometimes as the Madura Purána. This is the work of Parunjoti Tamburan, a Pandaram, or Saiva priest, who is said to have written it in the reign of Hari Víra Pandyan, in the Salivahan year 973 (A.D. 1051). It relates the sixty-four miracles or frolics of Sundaréswara, the tutelary divinity of Madura; and is, in fact, but a translation or paraphrase in Tamil of a Sanskrit local legend, entitled Hálásya, said to be a section of the Skanda Purána, a source always assigned in the Dekhin to detached local compositions, to which the composers wish to affix the authority of Pauranic sanctity. The Skanda Purána being a Saiva Purána, is the ready resource of that sect, and is made the parent of a much more numerous offspring than legitimately belong to it. The Hálásya is of this description; but if the date of its Tamil representative be correctly given, it is of use in fixing that of Kuna Pandya, with whose reign it closes. The collection contains two MSS. professing to be translations of the Madura Purána: they do not exactly agree, however; and one is much more brief than the other, whence it is possibly the translation of an abridged work, the abridgment not adhering, with inviolable fidelity, to its original, as is usually the case amongst Hindu writers. The MSS. are Nos. 7 and 8 of the List of Authorities. The account of the work and its author, is from a MS. list of Tamil authors, and the catalogue of Tamil books. Another MS., No. 11, which has been also
