The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c5.s1.17

c5.s1.17

One difficulty that is common to an interpretation of all Pāṇḍyan records arises from the way in which they mention regnal years in double dates x years opposite y years. Several suggestions have been made but none of them is quite satisfactory, and the usual procedure is to treat the date as equivalent to x + y years,¹ and calculate the date of accession accordingly. One instance which may go to justify this practice is found in the larger Sinnamanūr grant where the regnal year இரண்டாவதின் எதிர் பதினொன்றாவது is rendered in the Sanskrit part of the grant by Ṣoḍaśe Rājyavarṣe. Again, some inscriptions give the regnal year and the number of days since the commencement of the reign or since the commencement of the current regnal year. And when we get to the numerous epigraphs of the mediæval and later Pāndyas, such difficulties increase enormously. Almost invariably the records of the Pāndyas who ruled in Tinnevelly in the period of the decline of the Pāndya power, i.e. in the fifteenth century and later are dated in the Saka era; on the other hand Saka dates are the exception in the inscriptions of the mediæval Pāndyas or the Pāndyas of the Second Empire as we may call them. But several records contain astronomical data which yield often strange and perplexing results. Many kings have been made and unmade by hasty calculations and equally hasty corrections and the student of history who is not a specialist in astronomy has great difficulty with the astronomers.¹ And when it is remembered that the texts of the bulk of these inscriptions still await