The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c5.s1.1

c5.s1.1

The sources of Pāṇḍyan history may now be considered. The value of indigenous literature for the historian of India has generally been somewhat underrated. There are, it is true, few professedly historical works of a contemporary character and for the most part we have to rely on casual references to historical events in works of general literature or to winnow a large mass of legend in search of a grain of fact. But with patience and care it may be found that many useful suggestions are derived from these works. The local legends centering round Madura exist in three versions of which the earliest dating from the ninth or the tenth century A.D. is the *Tiruvilaiyāḍal Purāṇam* of Perumbarrappuliyūr Nambi, the other versions being another and much later work of the same name by Paranjōtimunivar and the Sanskrit *Sthalapurāṇa* known as the *Halāsyamahātmya*. The two later works give a list of seventy-three or seventy-four kings forming one continuous line of rulers while the earliest version only mentions, and that very casually, seven kings of the family. The set lists of the later *Purāṇas* were very early recognized to be worthless for purposes of history;¹ in fact most of the names are, on the face of it, inventions of later times. But several of these stories have a quaint interest for the general student who sees here almost the same tendencies at work as produced the legends of Regal Rome. The older *Tiruvilaiyāḍal* thus gives a story (No. 12) in explanation of the name Māḍakkulakīlmadurai which we find in