The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c6.s3.3

c6.s3.3

The Śangam works are generally understood to comprise the two long poems, the Śilappadikāram and the Manimēkalai, and the anthologies of occasional verses and short poems by different poets brought together in the well-known collections.¹ Even a cursory study of the many short poems and others of moderate length like the *Maduraikkāñji* will show two or or three things clearly. *Firstly*, we are dealing with a mass of literature that extends over three or four continuous generations or perhaps more. In the light of this internal evidence we may assign a length, of, say, 150 to 200 years for the period represented in these works. *Secondly*, the political geography of the country includes besides the ‘three monarchies’ of the south, a number of minor principalities ruled over by petty warrior chieftains, vying with one another in the arts of war and peace. *Thirdly*, the references frequently made to ports, ships and merchandise including foreign imports and exports remind us strongly of the notices of South India by the classical geographers and historians of the early years of the Christian era. The common references to ports like Muśiri, Korkai and Toṇḍi, to mention only a few, and articles like pepper, wine and silk cloth are too obvious to be missed. *Lastly*, the style and diction of these works undoubtedly bear close affinities to those of the *Śilappadikāram* and the *Maṇimēkalai* and are much nearer to these in point of time than to the hymns of the *Tiruvāśagam* or the *Tēvāram* and the two sets of works cannot belong to the same age but must be assigned to different periods which may be separated by centuries. This consideration gains in strength from the state of religious life which is reflected in the *Śilappadikāram* on the one hand and the devotional hymns on the other. We have only to recall the enumeration of the temples in Puhār (canto 5), the Veṭṭuvavari (canto 12) and the Āycciyar Kuravai (canto 17) in the *Śilappadikāram*¹ and contrast these with the fervid devotion to Śiva and to Viṣṇu coupled with an equally fervid hatred of the heretic sects of Buddhism and Jainism that mark the sectarian hymns of the *Tēvāram* and the *Tiruvāymoḷi*, and we at once realize that there is no difficulty involved in assuming an interval of some centuries between the two ages; on the other hand such an assumption seems to be forced on us by other considerations like the absence of any reference to the Pallavas in the *Śangam* works. It will now be clear that there is a strong *prima facie* case for accepting the chronological indications of the Gajabāhu synchronism and referring the *Śangam* works to the early centuries of the Christian era. And this arrangement could not be shaken except by arguments of equal cogency which do not conflict with the general probabilites of South Indian history.²