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-MANIMEKALAI.
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period of Buddhistic outspread in this region." (Mythic Society Journal, Vol. XII, No. 1, page 38.) This description of the religious life in Savakam by J-tsing tallies with that given in Manimekalai, Cantos 24 and 25. We may briefly set forth the story.
Manimekalai.
It is well known that Manimekalai was impli- Evidence in cated in the murder of Udaya Kumaran who passionately loved her. The Chola King, Killivalavan, ordered her imprisonment and she was subsequently released. Immediately after this, disgusted with her stay in the Chola country, she proceeded to Savakam whose king, Punnya Raja, was considered as an avatar of Buddha and to whom Manimēkalai desired to impart the secret of his former birth. The accounts of her meeting in that island a great Buddhistic sage, Dharma Savaka, the Preacher of the Law to the King,' and the subsequent interviews she had with Punnya Raja leave, no doubt, the impres sion that the whole island was swayed by the teachings of Buddhism. The personages mentioned in the two cantos may be mythical. One might even find in the whole account an echo of some of the Buddhistic Jātaka Stories. But there is absolutely no doubt that the whole story is based upon a substratum of facts and that is that Savakam in the time of Chattanar, the author of Manimekalai, was essentially Buddhistic. It is important to remember what has been stated before, that Fa-hien was disappointed to note the predominance of Brahminism in those
