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172
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1915
The
Five Pandyas."
Mr. Swamikannu Pillai's Table at foot of p. 166 (Ind. Ant. June 1913) is tentatively put forward, but he is so certain of its accuracy that he says it "will make it clear (1) that five Pandyas ruled at the same time; (2) that two Mâravarmans and two Jațâvarmans were co-regents with a fifth Pândya who might be either a Mâravarman or a Jațâvarman." I can at present see no sufficient ground for concurrence in this view, which appears to me fanciful Since, however, it is a theory sufficiently romantic to seize upon the imagination of South-Indian Hindus and induce them to accept it as an historic fact; and as such acceptance may, if it is not a fact, constitute a danger to science and lead to much confusion and difficulty hereafter, it is necessary to discuss it and to examine the evidence on which it is based. And for a commencement let me state that I find in its favour no evidence at all worthy of the name, and certainly some evidence to the contrary.
Southern India is saturated with the old-world legends of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and, in connection with the latter, the story of the five Pândava brothers. In all parts of the country every ancient cave or structure, every old fortress, every group of dolmens, cromlechs or kistvaens, is ascribed to the Five Pânḍavas. Many hills and hill-ranges are called Pañcha Pandava malai, the last word being Tamil for "hill." The principal rock-cut temples at Mahâvalipuram, the "seven Pagodas," which belong to the early part of the seventh century A.D., have received the names of the five brothers and their sister Draupadi, and so have the rock-cut remains at several other places. If one asks an uneducated villager for the local legend connected with any hill-fortress he almost always replies that it was "built by the Pandavas." Indeed it is not too much to say that everything in the country whose antiquity is such that its exact origin is unknown is ascribed to the heroes of the Mahabharata and there is no doubt that popular tradition connects the Pandya Kings with the Pandava brothers of the ancient epic and has always done so. Thus the larger Sinnamanûr grant, which belongs to the tenth century A. D. "one of the five"; but speaks of early Pândyan kings as bearing the title Panchavan, clearly shews that this was a mere title. Combined with the Vêlvikuḍi grant and the Madras Museum Plates, it furnishes us with a list of early Pândya sovereigns, which shews, during a period of about three centuries previous to A. D. 915, a regular succession of the crown from father to son (only in one case to a brother) for twelve generations. There is no trace here of any joint rule. The records merely shew that it pleas, the ruler and his people to perpetuate the old "Five-Pandya " legend and that the king and possibly every member of the royal family, was called "Panchavan." In no inscription with which I am acquainted is there the slightest hint of rule by any king other than the one mentioned in it. This is also the case generally with Singhalese and Chôla records dealing with Pâṇḍya kings.
The legend, no doubt, formed good material for the grandiose outbursts of courtiers. In two inscriptions of Kulôttuiga Chôla Is the king is lauded for having, shortly before A. D 1084 completely defeated "the Five Pandyas." But this is poetry. The Mahavan'a tells us that when Prince Parâkrama Bahu of Ceylon, in the first half of the thirteenth
7 Lest I should be thought by European readers to exaggerate let me quote a passage in Mr. V. Rangachari's paper on the Polygars (petty chieftains) of the extreme south in the last issue of the Indian Antiquary (June, 1914, p. 118)-" Most of these Tamil chiefs of Tinnevelly claim to have ruled their estates from the time of the Mahabharata or a Sivili Rajah "a claim which he, of course, rejects as "absurd," though some of them certainly came into existence severa! centuries ago.
8 At Tirukkalakunṛam and Chidambaram (S. I. I. III. 144. note 4; and Ep. Ind., V., 104.)
