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AUGUST, 1916)
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PANDYA MONARCHY
167
(11) The Epigraphist's official list of inscriptions copied during the year under report should contain, in separate columns, the names of (a) the distriot, (6) the Taluk or division, (c) the town to which each record belongs. This is very necessary, for at present only the name of the town is given ; and since very often there are many towns of the same name in the south of India, the enquirer has to search elsewhere to ascertain the provenance of the document-a tedious process which wastes valuable time.
(ili) Mr. Swamikannu Pillai, on p. 165 note 2, proposes that in future we should altogether abandon the practice of giving numbers to the names of kings. I trust that this proposal will be carried out by all writers. Up to the present certain Pâqdya kings have been described as “ Jațâvarman Sundara Pandya I", or "II", as the case may be. But so many Sundara Pandyas are now known to have lived that these numbers will inevitably have hereafter to be changed, and great confusion may result. The only safe course to adopt is to append to the name the known date of the king's accession. I would henceforth describe the kings just mentioned as "Jatavarman, (or, for short “Ja av :" or even “Jat:") Sundara Pandya (aco: 1251) " and "Jatavarman Sundara Pandya (acc : 1276)". Where the date of accession is not known as yet some other clue may be stated in brackets such as “ (about 13th cent.) ", " (time of Rajaraja Chola I)", “ (Vijayanagar period)", and so on.
I now proceed with a few remarks before entering on the main discussion regarding Mr. Swamikannu Pillai's settlement of the Pandya dates published by him.
Kshaya Tithis. . In preparing his portion of the treatise on Hindu chronology, which afterwards was published in the Indian Calendar, the late Mr. S. Balkrishna Dikshit wrote ( 32 p. 18) that "day on which no tilhi ends, or on which two tithis end, is regarded as inauspicious". Is this correct? If it is so then may it not be assumed that a royal grant or a private grant would probably not be made on such a day? I put this question because in some instances it will be found that Mr. Swamikannu Pillai has decided that the date of an inscription corresponds with such a day, the inscription actually quoting the expunged tithi, which would make the case still more remarkable 3 No. 62 of 1905, on which he relies for establishing the date of a hitherto unknown Pâqdya king whom he calls Jatavarman Kulasekhara II (p. 168), is one of these. And there are others.
The author's method of calculation gives him the ending moment of the tithi and not the beginning (unless he chooses to work this out), and one who works by this method is apt to let the beginning moment of the tithi in question escape him. Moreover the interval between each of the author's unite, -his ephemerie dealing only with two decimals of a day,- is as much as 14m, 248., and that alone will often cause the occurrence of a kshaya tithi to pass unnoticed. I feel safer with the Indian Calendar method, of which the unit is only 4fm., than with Mr. Swamikannu Pillai's Table X, and of course still safer with Prof. Jacobi's Special Tables". The Table X mentioned is however very useful for other purposes,
3 Similarly I have been led to believe that a civil day during which the moon touobes three nakshatra, or only one-in other words when a nakshatra falls altogether within the period of two stootva sunrisen, or is current at two sucesive Runriseis an unlucky day. (See Ind. Chronography p. 44, $426).
