South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c6.11

c6.11

It is impossible in the present state of South Indian Archæology to suggest the date of Agastya with any degree of accuracy. Mr. Raja has suggested that “Aryan influences had partly penetrated into Southern India before the time of Buddha, and that the age of Agastya was anterior to that of Buddha. When Agastya composed his Grammar in Tamil, he and after him his successors incorporated into their treatises a chapter on *Porul* which formed the subject-matter of the literature of the poets and bards that preceded him. But as the state of the society portrayed in *Porul* describes the manners and customs of a people who had lived at a period anterior to the formation of the Pandyan kingdom itself, I think there is no impropriety in my dating it as early as 1000 B.C.”³