The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c6.s1.4

c6.s1.4

A verse in the *Kishkindhākāṇḍa* of the *Rāmāyaṇa* has been taken to refer to the Kapāṭapuram of the Pāṇdyas famed in the Tamil legends of the ‘Three Saṅgams’.³ But even if the *sloka* bears the meaning attributed to it, it is notoriously unsafe to base any conclusions about chronology solely on the texts of the epics and there is still the possibility that the verse is not older than the age in which these legends grew. It is not altogether free from doubt if the grammarian Kātyāyana refers to the Pāndyan country and its king as has been generally held on the strength of the opinions of two great Sanskritists of the last generation—Prof. Max Müller and Sir R. G. Bhandarkar.¹ The original name of the Tamil country is பாண்டி (Pāṇḍi) and not பாண்டு (Pāṇḍu) which it should be, if Kātyāyana’s rule referred to it. And there is the possibility that the Pāndya of the Sanskrit grammar may be derived from Pāṇḍu, the name of a people in the Madhyadesa in Northern India.² The name Pāndya perhaps came to be applied to the Tamil Pāṇḍināḍu in a process of Sanskritization on account of phonetic similarity and a Pāṇḍava origin invented for the Tamil ruling family. Whatever its derivation may be, we find the form Pāndya employed by Kauṭilya in his Arthaśāstra and his references are clearly to the Pāndyas of South India and to their capital Madura.³ The importance of these references will depend upon the view taken of the age and authenticity of the text of the Arthaśāstra. Likewise the reference in the Mahāvaṃśa to a Pāndyan princess who became the queen of Vijaya of Ceylon soon after the Nirvāṇa of the Buddha is too vague and too much mixed up with legends to be of any value to the historian.⁴