Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/67

Rh the Southern part of India. The capital of Palayan Mâran was Mohoor, the exact site of which I am unable to ascertain. I, was somewhere close to the Pothiya Hill near Cape Comorin. The Pandyan King claimed to be a Maran and “Minavar Kon " or the King of the Minavar. The name Mâran appear to be identical with the name Mrânmar, borne by the tribe which conquered Burmah before the first century A.D. In the accounts of Burmah written in Pali, the country is known as Maramma-desa.

The next tribe of Tamil invaders was the Thirayer o “Sea Kings.” They were a great seafaring race, whose home appears to have been Lower Bengal and who travelled by sea to Burmah, Cochin, China, Ceylon and Southern India. A King of this tribe named Thirayan who reigned at Kanchi, the modern Kanchi-puram contemporary with Karikal-Chola, claimed to be a descendant of the god Vishnu, whose bed is on the ocean, according to Hindu Mythology It was on this account perhaps that the Chola Kings who belonged to this tribe, boasted of being descendants of the solar race. The oldest of the Chola Kings mentioned in the Tamil poems of the first century A. D. is Muchukunta. He is said to have saved Amaravati, the capital of Indra, when it was besieged by the Asuras, and that in gratitude for the service, Indra sent five giants who killed the Nagas of Kaviri-paddinam and enabled the Chola King to take possession of that town.