Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/28

Rh manya according to the poet Nakkirar. This hill is south-west of modern Madura but directly west of the ruins now known as old Madura; east of the capital was another hill, where there was a temple dedicated to Vishnu. On the latter hill were three sacred springs, to bathe in which was believed to he an act of great merit by the votaries of Vishnu. On the way from Madura to Uraiyur (now a suburb of Trichinopoly) were the Sirumalai hills which were covered with groves Of mango and jack trees, arecanut and cocoanut palms, and where onion, saffron, raggy, millet, hill rice, edible roots, plantain and sugarcane were cultivated extensively.

Of the boundaries of Pandinadu, or of the exact extent and position of the other twelve Nadus comprised in Tamilakam, there is no record in ancient Tamil poems. The accounts given by commentators are also conflicting. In the absence of any connected account of the ancient geography of the country by Tamil authors, I have had to make my own researches with the help of the information available in the Periplus and in the works of Pliny and Ptolemy.

There were four Nâdus or provinces bordering on the Arabian Sea, in the following order, from North to South: Pooli,