South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c6.22

c6.22

This great sage is specially associated with the princes of the Pandya kingdoms in the South, he being stated to have officiated both as minister and spiritual teacher to the founder of the Pandya principality, and the date of the earlier Pandya kings ought to suggest the approximate time when Agastya lived and composed his works. Ram Raja in his *Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus* says: "It (Sakalādhikāra) is generally believed to have been composed by Agastya under the auspices of the founder of the Pandya government, a circumstance which, if admitted, would give to this work a very high antiquity. It is, however, difficult to trace the exact period when the Pandya principality was originally established. Mr. Wilson in his prefatory remarks to his catalogue of the *Mackenzie Collection* places this event three or four centuries before the Christian era, although in another place he fixed the date of the civilization of the South of India ten centuries before Christ. As the Mahabharata which is believed to have been composed by Vyasa in the beginning of the *Kaliyug* makes mention of the Pandya and Chola governments, we must give them credit for a higher antiquity." Recent writers have assigned the eighth century B.C., as the probable date of Agastya's immigration to the South.