Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/23

Rh then under construction. This is quite in accordance with later Tamil poems and inscriptions which speak of Karikal Chôlas the king who commenced the construction of the high banks along both sides of the bed of the Kaviri. The construction of the Kaviri banks which extended along its course to a distance of about 100 miles from its mouth, was an undertaking of such magnitude that it could not have been completed during the reign of Karikal. The Chôla King, who invaded Ceylon in order to procure captives to work at the banks, might have been therefore Karikal or his immediate successor. This tradition is further evidence of the fact that Chenkudduva Chera was contemporary with Gajabâhu I. who lived in the early part of the second century A. B. Chenkudduvan’s grandfather Karikal Chôla should have therefore reigned in the latter half of the first century A.D., or in other words, about eighteen hundred years ago. It will appear further on, from my account of Tamil literature, that the poets of the last Sangha at Madura—many of whom allude to the Chêra kings Athan and Chenkudduvan—should be assigned to the same period.

I shall in the following pages first describe the ancient geography of the land of the Tamils, then their foreign commerce, the different races that spoke Tamil, their political history, and conclude with a brief account of their social life, mode of warfare, literature, philosophy and religion.