Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/73

Rh Panchavati which was situated on the banks of the Godaveri near the modern Nasik is said to have been two yojanas from the hermitage of Agastya. It follows therefore that during the time of Valmiki, Agastya’s hermitage was believed to be near the modern Nasik. Danda-karanya, the modern Mahratta country, as described as a forest infested by wild tribes who disturbed the religious rites of the Brahmins, while the country South of the river Kaviri is designated Janasthan, or a region inhabited by civilized people. In the passage describing the despatch of monkey soldiers in search of Sita, they are directed to go to the countries of the Andhras, the Pandyas, the Cholas and the Keralas in the South, and are told that they will there see the gate of the city of the Pandyas adorned with gold and jewels These descriptions in the Ramayana go to show that during Valmiki’s time, the Aryas had some knowledge of the Tamil people and considered them as a civilized nation, and that they knew the Pandyan capital to be a very wealthy city. Another Sanscrit author, Katyayana who wrote his aphorisms called Varthikas, to explain and supplement the grammatical Sutras of Panini, and who is popularly known to have lived during the time of the Nandas in the first half of the fourth Century B. C., allules to the Pandyas and Cholas and says that one sprang from an individual of the tribes of the Pandas, or the Kings of their country, should be called a Pandya.”

It is beyond doubt therefore that long before the fourth Century B. C. the Pandyan Kingdom in the South of India had come into existence. But of the founder of the Southern Pandyan kingdom nothing definite is known. According to the Mahabharata current in South India, Arjuna is said to have married Chitrangada, the daughter of Malayadhvaja, King of Pandya. But as the section containing this account is not to found in copies of the poem which are current in Northern India, it is doubtless an interpolation. From other accounts however it