Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/33

Rh result of Indra's escapade was a son, who was stowed away in a secret place (maravuidam). Hence his descendants are known as Maravan.* The head of the Maravans is the Sētupati (lord of the bridge), or Rāja of Rāmnād. "The Sethupati line, or Marava dynasty of Rāmnād," the Rev. J. E. Tracy writes, † " claims great antiquity. According to popular legendary accounts, it had its rise in the time of the great Rāma himself, who is said to have appointed, on his victorious return from Lanka (Ceylon), seven guardians of the passage or bridge connecting Ceylon with the mainland .... Another supposition places the rise of the family in the second or third century B.C. It rests its case principally upon a statement in the Mahāwanso, according to which the last of the three Tamil invasions of Ceylon, which took place in the second or third century B.C., was under the leadership of seven chieftains, who are supposed, owing to the silence of the Pāndyan records on the subject of South Indian dealings with Ceylon, to have been neither Chēras, Chōlas, or Pāndyans, but mere local adventurers, whose territorial proximity and marauding ambition had tempted them to the undertaking .... Another supposition places the rise of the family in the eleventh or twelfth century A.D. There are two statements of this case, differing according to the source from which they come. According to the one, which has its source in South India, the rise of the family took place in or about 1059 A.D., when Rāja Rāja, the Chōla king, upon his invasion of Ceylon, appointed princes whom he knew to be loyal to himself, and who, according to some, had aided him in his conquest of all Pāndya, to act as guardians of the