The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c6.s3.10

c6.s3.10

That we read the history of religious faith in South India differently from Mr. Swamikkannu Pillai has been already indicated. It is not possible to see how that distinguished chronologist claims the support of ‘Dr. Bhandarkar and other eminent authorities’ for his view of Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism in the Paripāḍal as on the one hand he has not given any indications that would enable us to test the statement, and on the other, Dr. Bhandarkar’s work is full of the sense of the difficulties of marking exact chronological limits in the history of religions in India and leaves many points studiedly vague. At any rate the present writer is constrained to confess his inability to see Mr. Pillai’s meaning and rest content with the remark that arguments which resolve themselves into differences of opinion cannot, with profit, be pursued far. He may however quote Bhandarkar and say ‘there is nothing to show that Vaiṣṇavism had not penetrated to the Tamil country earlier i.e., about the first century’ (p. 50). There is indeed a tradition which ascribes the Jīvakacintāmaṇi to a Sangam but this very tradition seems to distinguish this Sangam from the earlier one and refer it to Poyyāmoḷi Pulavar.¹ That in a work of his brother we see more of Śeṅguṭṭuvan than of the two other monarchs who were his contemporaries in the Tamil land is only to be expected and does not need any special explanation; much less does it warrant the theory that Iḷaṅgō-Aḍigaḷ is a fictitious pen-name. Lastly, when Mr. Pillai concedes that the Kaṇṇaki legend may be as old as Gajabāhu I in Ceylon he virtually gives away his case; for the ‘Kaṇṇaki legend’ was distinctly of South Indian, not of Ceylonese, origin.