History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c7.s1.35

c7.s1.35

Moreover they addressed their charters invariably in Prakrit and Sanskrit, and never in the Tamil language. Such of the charters that contain any allusion to the Nāga marriage mention neither a Chōḷa ancestry nor Maṇipallavam their alleged original home. Their records on the contrary show that they are different from the southern Tamil rulers, and hailed from the north as representatives of Aryan or Sanskrit culture. The hostile relationship of the early Pallavas with the early Tamil rulers, one of the Pallava kings being called the ‘submarine-fire to the oceanlike army of the Chōḷas,’ ¹ seems to be opposed to this Chōḷa-Nāga origin of the Pallava dynasty. For these reasons it looks as if that Toṇḍamān-Iḷam-Tiraiyan had no connection with the Pallava family of Kāñchīpura known to us from charters, and probably was a Tiraiyar-chief ² who preceded the Pallavas and was a subordinate of the contemporary Chōḷa ruler in the second century A.D.