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248 are absolutely incredible and contrary to the testimonies of epigraphy and literary history.

The list of the forty-nine Pandya kings under whose auspices the third academy thrived is not given anywhere ; but the name of the last (Ugra Pandya or Ugra Peruvaludi) alone occurs both in the stalapurana and in Tamil literature. It was in the reign of this king, according to one tradition, that the third Sangam or the famous seminary of learning at Madura came to an end, when its members were completely vanquished in a poetical contest with the low caste Tiruvalluvar. But Tiruvalluvar (A. D. 80) lived at the time of the second academy, and had therefore nothing to do with the third Sangam or its destruction. That he was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the third Sangam, that all the forty-nine members of it eulogized the Kural before they were drowned in the “golden lily” tank, that the famous Kapilar of this academy was his brother, and that he was a Paraiya by caste—all these are figments of the Dravidian imagination. In the early years of the Christian era there was no Paraiya caste ; Kapilar was a Brhaman poet of Tiruvadavur in the Madura district, and was the author of Kurinchipattu, Innanarpatu and several other poems ; none of the forty-nine commendatory verses belong to the same period, nor were they composed by poets of the same nadu; and lastly it is not possible to believe that all these poets conferred with one another and agreed to extol the Kural in poems of the Venba metre and that in