Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/352

 34 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. peace have been chiefly among themselves, and they have grown up a separate people, as unlike the rest of the world as can well be conceived. Of the three the most southern was the Pandya kingdom, which occupied the extreme south of the peninsula from Cape Comorin to the Vellar river 1 in the Pudukottai state on the east coast, and to Achchankovil Pass 2 on the west, including the southern part of Travankor. It seems to have been of sufficient importance about the time of the Christian Era to have attracted the special attention of Greek and Roman geographers and merchants. How much earlier it became a state, or had a regular succession of rulers, we know not, 3 but it seems to have attained to some consistency as early as five or six centuries before the Christian Era, for we find its princes referred to in the earliest Singhalese traditions of the ' Mahawansa.' 4 Their early capital was probably Korkai or Kolkai, at the mouth of the Tamraparni close to Kayal, and known to the early geographers as the seat of the pearl fishery ; but the Pandya princes, at an early date, either removed to Madura, or possibly they had another capital there. This continued to be the seat of government of the later rulers of the country from some time in the I2th century till its absorption in the middle of the i8th. During the long period of their rule, the Pandyas had several epochs of great brilliancy and power, followed by long intervening periods of depression owing to frequent invasions from their neighbours the Chola kings of Trichinopoly. The 1st century, and afterwards the 5th or 6th, seem to have been those in which they especially distinguished themselves. The large number of gold, silver and copper coins, chiefly of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Nero, that have been found at different places in the region, indicate a considerable commerce with the West at that age. We have lists of kings, but how far mythical we know not, the times at which any of them lived being quite unknown before the pth or loth century, and such as have been approximately ascertained between the pth and 1 3th century are those mentioned in Chola inscriptions. If buildings of the first ten or twelve centuries exist, which is by 1 It falls into Palks Strait in 10 8' N. latitude. 2 In N. latitude 9 6'. 3 See Bishop Caldwell's ' Political and General History of the District of Tinne- velly' (Madras, 1881); and 'Indian Antiquary,' vol. xxii. (1893), pp. 57ffg. 4 Vijaya sends to the Pcandya king for his daughter. ' Mahawansa,' ch. vii. And the second and fourth Sinhalese princes are named Pandu - vasa and Pandukabhaya, as being of Pandya descent.