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120
THE SANGAM AGE.
Views of Kanake. sa bhai Pillai.
The next to enter the field was the late Mr. V. Kanakasabhai Pillai. Following up the clue thus presented by Mr. Sastriyar, he not only maintained with greater insistence,the Gajabāhusynchronism, but also brought in additional evidence to prove that the Sangam must have flourished in the second century A.D. As his Tamils Eighteen II undred Years Ago is out of print and as the views of many scholars are mere elaborations of what he had stated, we need offer no apology for quoting him in extenso.
“ The Chilappadlikaram also neentions the fact that Chengudduva Chera paid a friendly visit to the kings of Magadhaøn the banks of the Ganges. It gives the name of the Magadha King as Nurruvar kannar or the ‘Hundred Karnas' and this expression was long a puzzle to me, until it struck me that it was a translation of the Sanskrit title, "Satakarnin. Several kings of the Karna or Andhra dynasty bore the epithet Satakarnin, anil coins and inscriptions of these kings have been found, in which the Pali form of the word "Satakani' occurs. Sanskrit scholars have however niisread the name as Satakarnin, insteado of Satakarnin. The Tamil rendering of the name into ‘Hundred Karnas' in a contemporary poem leaves no doubt of the fact that the name is correctly Satakarnin, made up of the words Sata (hundred) and Karna (ears), the epithet evidently meaning a king who employed one hundred spies, or had one hundred sources of information. The Vayu,
