The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c9.43

c9.43

One very interesting question, which is as elusive as it is interesting, that is connected with the name of Varaguṇa is that of the date of Māṇikkavāśagar. Before the discovery, about 1906, of the larger Śinnamanūr plates and other records there was only one Varaguṇa known, and that was the king of the legend of the vision of Śivalōkam in the *Tiruvilaiyāḍal*. And this reference to a Varaguṇa did not help very much in deciding the age of the Śaiva saint who refers to the king in the *Tirukkōvaiyār*; but since two Varaguṇas became available to history from the new epigraphical finds, several scholars have, with great eagerness, sought to fix the age of Māṇikkavāśagar by identifying the Varaguṇa mentioned by him with one or the other of these kings. But it does not seem that this epigraphical short cut to the date of this saint is in any way better supported than that other effort to fix the age of the Śangam from the references in the Vēḷvikkudi grant which we have seen no reason to accept as satisfactory. But it is not possible to pursue the question of the age of Māṇikkavāśagar at any length here; it can only be stated that there are serious difficulties in the way of assigning Māṇikkavāśagar to the reign of either of these kings in the eighth or the ninth century A.D. and that the Varaguṇa Pāndya referred to in the *Tirukkōvaiyār* must still be taken to be the Varaguṇa of legend about whom, as yet, we do not know anything more than is contained in that story.¹