Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/425

 THE PANDYA KINGDOM 367 and learning, is also of nigh antiquity, and probably coexisted with Korkai from a very early date. The Kings of Madura adopted a fish, or a pair of fishes, as the family crest. No continuous history of the Pandya dynasties prior to the twelfth century can be written. The scraps of information concerning them before that time are ex- ceedingly meagre. The most ancient mention of the name Pandya is found in the commentary of the gram- marian Katyayana, who may be assigned to the fourth century B. c. In Asoka's time the Pandya kingdom was independent, and lay altogether outside the limits of the northern empire, which extended to about the latitude of Madras. A Pandya king sent an embassy to Augustus Caesar, and the pearl fishery in his dominions was well known to the Greeks and Romans of the first century A. D. Pliny was aware that the king resided at Madura in the interior. Roman copper coins of the smallest value have been found in such numbers at Madura as to sug- gest that a Roman colony was settled at that place. They come down to the time of Arcadius and Honorius (400 A.D.). Roman gold coins of the early empire have been discovered in such large quantities in Southern India that it is apparent that they served for the gold cur- rency of the peninsula, as the English sovereign now does in many foreign countries. Five coolie loads of aurei were found in 1851 near Cannanore on the Mala- bar coast, mostly belonging to the mintage of Tiberius