Indian Antiquary Vol 59

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 170

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ August, 1930
and Sanskrit charters and the Brahmanic culture that is now inferred from them, do not negative the Chola-Någa origin. One single ruling family could not have introduced that culture to an alien people in a comparatively large area. As for the language of the inscriptions, it would most naturally have been the language or dialect prevalent in the district in which the inscriptions were set up, or else the language which influenced the literature of the period. Whatever it was, it certainly would not have been a foreign language brought in by the earliest member of a ruling dynasty, and understood only by himself and his few followers.
The absence of certain positive statements in inscriptions and literature should not be taken as an argument to prove a negative. It is quite probable, and the known facts do not make it an impossibility, that the early descendants of Iļam Tirayan, or even Ilam Tirayan himself, married among one or other of the northern dynasties, such as the Chutu Någas, the Satavahanas or the Kadambas, as it would have been extremely difficult for Iļam Tirayan to obtain brides from among the haughty and exclusive Tamil dynasties on account of the taint of illegitimacy in his blood. The statement in the Vêlûrpåļayam plates that the earliest Pallava 'acquired the emblems of sovereignty on marrying the daughter of the Lord of the Serpents' is either a reference to the parents of Ilam Tirayan or to an alliance contracted by Ilam Tirayan himself with the Chutu Nagas and the acquisition of the northern dominions of the Pallava kingdom through such an alliance. The early Pallava rulers, therefore, may have adopted a culture in keeping with the alliances made by them. The dialect of the earliest inscriptions in Ceylon was Prakrit, although the rulers were Nägas and Kalingas; and some of the later non-Simhalese rulers issued their charters in Simhalese, although they wrote their own signatures in Grantha or Tamil. The diffusion through the Pallavas of some elements of Brahmanic culture in the Chola and the Påndya kingdoms can be easily traced. The Grantha characters displaced the Vatteluttu of the Tamils first in the Chola, and then in the Pandya country, and such influence came through the Pallavas. If the culture came from the north, it is not very essential that the dynasty of kings who readily accepted that culture should also have come from the north.
Even before the time of Ilam Tirayan, Kânci had become a stronghold of Buddhism and Jainism. The different modes of worship in the country seem to have been considered by the people as equally true and by the rulers as equally useful. This toleration was the means of producing not only complete religious freedom, but also political concord between the inhabitants and the rulers. For a Hindu king to see his son converted to Buddhism or Jainism was not an infrequent phenomenon. The Pâli and Sanskrit literature ushered in by the Buddhists and Jains and the influence of Vedic Brâhmans made such a strong combination as to change the outlook of the Kanci rulers within a very short time. Hindu religious intolerance began at a much later period with the advent of the Saivite Saints and the Vaignava Alvårs.
Prakrit records belong to the third and fourth centuries A.D. If Ilam Tirayan came to the throne in the third quarter of the second century A.D., if he and his successors came under the influence of Brahmanic culture, and if the Kánci kings brought under their sway the territory below the river Krişna, which was under the Andhra rule till about the first quarter of the third century, it would be only natural to find Pråkşit charters in that territory. And the state. ment in the Allahabad pillar inscription, that the said territory was under the rule of Visnugopa then, becomes quite intelligible. Those charters would have been, in all probability, issued inimitation of the charters already issued by Andhra kings and their chieftains.
If it be admitted that the Maidavolu and Hirahadagalli plates, the earliest of the Präkfit records, were issued by Sivaskandavarman, who preceded Vişnugopa by four reigns, then it is clear that the kings of Kanci had, by the middle of the third century A.D., come under the influence of northern culture ; for these charters recorded grants to temples and Brahmans.
The decadence of the Tamil language in Tondaimandalam after Ilam Tirayan and the failure of his successors to extend their patronage to Tamil literature do not necessarily mean that the Pallava kings of Kañci came from the north. It was owing to frosh interogte