Indian Antiquary Vol 46

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 83

APRIL, 1917)
THE ANTIQUITIES OF MAHABA LIPUR
71
I landirayan of Kanchi, and refers to a time certainly anterior to that of Simhavish ņu, the founder of the great Pallava dynasty, and may go back to the 2nd century A. D. It must be remembered that this Simhavishņu himself was a Vaishṇava, according to the Udayêndiram plates of Nandivarman I., Pallavamalla, 2' while Râjasimha is described in the same document as a devout worshipper of Siva (Paramamâhêśvara). A Vishnu temple in the locality seems quite possible, either of sufficient nearness or remoteness in point of time.
Was the place of sufficient importance to deserve this honour before the age of the great Pallavas, specifically before the date of Narasimhavarman I, Mahamalla, whose name stuck on to the place even long after the fall of the dynasty. It is in point to notice here that it is not only the works of the Alvârs that call the place Mallai, uniformly the same designation is given to it in the work Nandikkalambakam, a Tamil work celebrating the exploits of Nandivarman, Victor at Tellâu. The age of this monarch is not yet definitely fixed, but he came later, perhaps much later, than Nandivarman Pallavamalla. How far back the name Mallai goes we have not the means of deciding, but a coin of Theodosius has been discovered of date A. D. 371-395, which would indicate, although the evidence must be regarded as yet slender, that the place was a port of some importance commercially.30 A recent articles in the Christian College Magazine attempts to arrange the genealogy of the Pallavas of Kanchi and takes it to eight generations before Simhavishnu, the father of Mahendra, the monarch who excavated most of the caves of Southern India. If we can take the time occupied by these at about two centuries, this will take us to about A. D. 400 from the known dates of Narasimha I. There are three other names to be accommodated perhaps, before we come to Vishnugopa of Kanchi, who suffered defeat at the hands of the Indian Napolean' Samudraguptaabout A. D. 350. One of these very early Pallavas, Simhavarman, is said, in the Amaravati Pillar Inscription now in the Madras Museum, to have gone up to the Himalayas to imprint his lanchana' on its face, as symbolical of his universal sovereignty 3! This is in obvious imitation of the crowned kings of the Tamil land, the Chera, Chola and the Pandya.. We have to look for the particular Pandya, Chola and Chera much anterior to his time-whatever that time be.
This would, under all legitimate canons of criticism, bring us to the earlier oenturies of the Christian era and the geographical data of the classical writers ought to give us the clue.
We have already noted that the Chinese traveller Hiuen Thsang refers both to the capital and the port as if they both had eithez the sam, name, or as though they could be regarded as the capital and its port, so intimately connected with each other 88 to be confounded by even an eminently intelligent foreigner such as the enlightened
Master of the Laws' was. Ptolemy, the geographer, writing in the middle of the 2nd century A. D. refers to a port, as well as an interior city, named Malange.33 The Periplus, written about 80 A. D., refers to three ports and marts north of the Kavery; Camara,
25 Simhavishņu-the grandfather of Narsimhavarman I, was a devout Vaishnave. (Udayêndiram Plates, 8. 1. 1., Vol. II, Pt. iii, p. 370) Bhaktyåråd hita Vishnuh Simhavish qull.'
30 J. R. A. S. 1904, pp. 609 and 636. 31 Vol. for 1913-14, pp. 239-374, by Mr, K. V. Subrahmanya Iyer, Assistant Epigraphist, 32 S. Ind. Ins., Vol. I., p. 27, 11. 33-34, 93 Ante, Vol. XIII, pp. 333 and 368.