The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11.7.1

c11.7.1

The kings as a rule seem to have been very generous patrons of learning and the arts. The few long epigraphs of this age that have come down to us furnish, by their poetic merit, clear proof of the high state of literary culture in the Sanskrit and Tamil languages in the Pāndya country and are evidently compositions of court poets who were regularly maintained by the kings. The names of some of these composers of *praśastis* have been preserved in the records. These compositions which are recorded in the copper plates which register the more important royal grants are, as we have seen, the most important source for the general history of the rulers of this age; but they also furnish information on several minor matters of considerable interest to the student of social life. We learn very casually from the Madras Museum plates that there was a colony of Brahmins from Magadha; and that they had a separate *grāmam* set apart for them by name Śabdāli and this may be accepted as some evidence that the south of India was in those days not isolated from the north as is sometimes thought. We are able to trace the prevalence of two subordinate divisions adapted evidently to local administrative purposes. One of them is referred to as *nāḍu* or *kūrram* and the Sanskrit part of the Sinnamanūr grant even applies the term *rāṣṭra* to the same division.