Page:Tamil studies.djvu/385

358 (2) குடவர்கோமா னெடுஞ் சேரலா தற்குச் | சோழன் மணக்கிள்ளியீன்றமகன் -

SLOVI DEG EN AW@=D@@2501.-Ib. 50. (3) The Chola king Parantaka I (A. D. 907-946) married a Kerala princess.

(4) Kulasekhara Pandya took with him ... all the forces of the two Kongu countries that belonged to his mother's two brothers.—Mahawanso, 239.

Matrimonial alliances among the three Tamil dynasties seem to have continued until about the down-fall and extinction of the ancient Pandya and Chola houses between the 11th and 13th centuries, when the influence of the Nambudri Brahmans began to extend even into the Kerala royal households. The latest alliance of this kind was between Ravivarma alias Kulasekhara and a Pandya princess in A.D. 1299. This Kerala king defeated Vira Pandya and was crowned on the banks of the Vaiga. He ruled over Kerala, Pandya and Chola countries till about 1316. Probably this was the period when the communication between Kerala and the other two Tamil countries began to decline; and this was the period when the Nambudri Brahmans laid the foundation stone for the ill-planned tottering edifice of the Malayalam tongue, by their closer touch with the Nayar and other high caste Dravidian families.

The statement that the early Malayalam poets were affected by the early Tamil poets seems rather surprising, the term 'early not referring to the same age, as both are of unequal antiquity. Malayalam had scarce.