Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/21

Rh Tamil poems and inscriptions on copper-plates recording the grants of Chola kings who lived in the tenth and, eleventh centuries, Karikal Chola I is described as one of the earliest and most remote ancestors of the Chola kings then reigning. It is evident therefore that the Gajabâhu referred to in Chilappathikaram could not be Gajabâhu II., but must have been Gajabâhu I. who was king of Ceylon from about A.D. 113 to A.D. 125.

The Chilappathikaram also mentions the fact that Chenkudduva Chera paid a friendly visit to the King of Magadha on the banks of the Ganges. It gives the name of the Magadha King as Nurruvar Kannar or the “Hunured Karnas” and this expression was long a puzzle to me, until it struck me that it was a translation of the Sanskrit title “Satakarnin.” Several kings of the Karna or Andhra dynasty bore the epithet Satakarnin, and coins and inscriptions of these kings have been found, in which the Pali form of the word “Satakani” occurs. Sanskrit scholars have however misread the name as Sâtakarnin, instead of Satakarnin. The Tamil rendering of the name into “Hundred Karnas” in a contemporary poem leaves no doubt of the fact that the name is correctly Satakarnin, made up of the words Sata (hundred) and Karna (ears), the epithet evidently meaning a king who employed one hundred spies, or had one hundred sources of information. The Vayu, Vishnu, Matsya and Bhagavata Puranas state that the Mauryas ruled the Magadha Empire for 137 years, and after them the Sungas 112 years, and after them the Kanvaynas 45 years: and that after them there were 30 kings of the Andhra dynasty who reigned 456 years: but none of the Puranas gives a complete list of the names of the Andhra kings. The Matsya, which appears to be the oldest, of the Puranas furnishes the fullest list, which contains the names of only 29 kings and the number of years during which each of the kings