The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9.24

c9.24

¹ This is how Mr. Krishna Sastri understands the text. He thinks that this Vanji was surely Karūr, though he wisely concedes that an older capital of the Cheras may have been another Vanji. But the text is not without difficulty. It runs ‘கூடல்வஞ்சிகோழி என்னு மாடமாமதில் புதுக்கியும்’. Mr. K. G. Sankara translates this into ‘renewed the walls named (ennum) Kūḍal, Vanji and Kōḷi’ and remarks: ‘All the walls might have been in Madura and only named after the other capitals in memory of a previous conquest of the Cholas and Cheras’ (I. A., li, p. 214). This explanation would be excellent, if Kūḍal were not there in the same rank with Vanji and Kōḷi. On the other hand Mr. Krishna Sastri’s translation is ‘renewed the palaces and the high ramparts (of the capital towns) named Kūḍal, Vanji and Kōḷi’ and as he points out, we must understand after ‘ennum’ some word like ‘nagarangaḷin’. An alternative suggestion of Mr. Sastri is to take māḍamāmadil to mean a capital city (E.I., vol. xvii, p. 307).