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158
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(June, 1896.
The conclusion then is irresistible, that in the days of Samkaracharya, Sambandha was & well known character - an inspired poet, worthy of being spoken of as the distinctly lovable among the greatest poets of India, and a saintly person, sufficiently remote in time for it to be then believed that he had been sackled by the goddess Pårvatf herself. Taking then the age assigned to Samkara by Dr. Fleet, we may now safely assert that Sambandha, could not have lived later than the seventh century; and that in all probability, there was an appreciable distance of time between Samkara and himself. What this interval actually was, it is impossible to determine with the existing materials. We cannot, however, be far wrong if we take it as a century or two.
That we are not attributing too high an antiquity, will appear from the age usually assigned to Sambandha by enlightened native scholars, of whom I shall here mention but two or three.
Mr. Simon Casie Chitty, the author of the Ceylon Gazetteer and the Tamil Plutarch, says in the latter work of his : -" In our opinion, as the date given in the Cholapúrvapattayam for the accession of Seraman Peruma! seems to admit of no doubt, we may place the period of the existence of Sandara and his two fellow champions in the fifth century of the Christian era for a certainty; and thereby clear it from the monstrons chronology of the Puranas."1 Mark the last expression. In the opinion of this native Christian Tamil scholar, to assign Sundara to the fifth century - not the 13th as advocated by Dr. Caldwell - is only to clear the age of that author from the monstrous chronoloy of the Puranas ! If Sandara lived in the fifth, Sambandha, who, as we know, preceded him by a few generations, niust have lived somewhere about the fourth century. But until we know more of the history of the Cholapúrvapaffayam here depended upon, we cannot afford to be as positive as Mr. Chitty. We know also, on the other hand, the slippery indefiniteness that is inherent in so vague and general a designation as Sêraman Peruma!, - perhaps as misleading as its notorious counterpart, Sandara-Pandya. Anyhow, the opinion of so well-informed a person as Mr. (asie Chitty, and the Cho!apúrvapattayam he cites, cannot but show that it is not a violent assumption to allow an interval of a century or two between Sambandha and Samkara of the seventh century.
The---second native scholar I have in view is Mr. Damodaram Pillai, the erudite editor of so many valuable Tamil classics. He is decidedly of opinion that Kun Pandya (and therefore Sambandha) lived more than 2,000 years ago. To support this conclusion, primarily based upon the usual Paråņic lists of Påndyas, he makes a statement which, if historically correct, ought to enable the to arrive at a more or less accurate approximation. The present head of the Tiruinaasambandha matha of Madura, it would appear, claims himself to be the 114th in lineal succession from the Saiva devotee, in whose name the monastery is established. If this assertion is well-founded, it will indicate, no doubt, a lapse of fifteen to twenty centuries, according to the average we assume for each of the 113 deceased heads of the monastery. To urge an antiquity of 2,000 years, appears to me to be rather unsafe. It would scarcely leave time for Jainism to develop itself in Southern India, and to assume those formidable proportions, which brought about the reaction in the age of Sambandha. But, however that may be, Mr. Damodaram Pillai himself announces, in another foot-note, 3 a fact that cannot but affect the value of the testimony for scientific purposes. The present matha in Madura, it would appear, was established only as a branch or sabordinate monastery
1 See p. 21.
? Preface to Virafolyam, p. 17. According to Mr. Nelson, the present head is the 27th hereditary manager. Mr. Damodaram Pillai explains the discrepancy as due to Mr. Nelson's including in his account even those anointed as heirs apparent. It is with the deepest regret that I have now to record a change in the personnel of this matha. The late revered head of the monastery, Rai Bahadur Svaminatha Derika SvAmigal, breathed his Jast on the morning of the 29th January 1896. No Hindi matha had ever an abler or more enlightened head.
* Preface to Virasliyam, p. 20.
