Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/200

178 name was afterwards assigned. This happened, according to the authority followed, in the last yuga, or age, in which seventy-two princes are enumerated as ruling over the kingdom. Other accounts, however, do not name the founder of the monarchy, hut pass over some indefinite interval to the reign of Sámpanna Pandya, whose son, Kula Sék-'hara is, in all the lists, specified as the first king of Madura, from his being regarded traditionally as the founder of that city. It is from this prince that seventy-two kings are enumerated in the list above referred to. Another list, said to be taken from the Madura Purâna, but, if so, not very accurately compiled, reckons seventy-five princes from Soma Sundara, the third of the preceding list, to Kuna Pandya, who appears to be its seventy-third. Another list limits the number of kings from Kula Sék'hara to Kuna Pandya to thirty, whilst it is stated generally, in a different authority, that the whole number of Pandya kings who preceded Kuna Pandya, amounted to three hundred and fifty-seven: it is evident, therefore, that beyond mere names, and those, perhaps, more fanciful than historical, we are not likely to derive much satisfactory information from these conflicting statements. It may, indeed, be observed of such lists, and they are numerous, that they bear their own refutation when they assert very high antiquity. The names are from the first Sanskrit; but, according to the most able scholars in the languages of the Dekhin, there was a period which preceded the infusion of Sanskrit into the dialects of the south, and the princes of those periods were, of course, not designated by exotic appellations. Either, therefore, the first names of the lists are modern fabrications, or the lists ascend to a comparatively recent date. There can be no doubt, that in examining local lists of Hindu kings in the peninsula, both sources of error, or misrepresentation, are to be taken into account.

The objection advanced against these lists applies equally to all the