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CONCLUSION.
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Tamil land. We know that Buddhism was flourishing in South India during the time of Fa-hien's visit (4th century A.D.). Since then, the decay of that religion was rapid.and when Hiuen Tsang visited Kāñchi (640 A.D.), he heard that in Malakūta (Pandyan country) Buddhism was almost extinct, the ancient monasteries being mostly in ruins. This is the period that, is probably referred to in Manimekalai. Under the circumstance we are not wrong in concluding that Manimekalai was composed after the time of Fa-hien.
We have thus tried to make it clear that there Conclusion. are serious difficulties to be overcome before we can affirm that the date of the Sangam is the 2nd century A.D. The final statement of Dr. S. Krishnaswami Ayyangar in his The Beginnings of South Indian History, "And now that the necessary preliminary investigation has been carried to the degree of fulness to carry conviction, more work will be done to extract from the material all that may usefully be taken for the building up of the history of this part of the country and of that comparatively remote period," seen's therefore to be premature. No doubt more work requires, to be done, as he says, not so much for the purpose of building up a history on the foundation which scholars like him believe they have well and truly laid, as for laying the foundation itself.
1 The Beginnings of South Indian History, p. 362.
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