A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c10.8

c10.8

The identification of the Satiyaputa kingdom is not easy and has long been a subject of controversy. The name was, till recently, recognized as a tribal name which may be Sanskritized into Satyaputras, ‘members of the fraternity of truth’, and the only tribe answering to this description known to early Tamil literature held to be the Kōśar, celebrated for their unswerving fidelity to the plighted word as well as for their heroism in war. Their home is said to have been in the Kongu country—roughly the modern districts of Salem and Coimbatore—and they overran the Tulu country on the west coast in the early centuries of the Christian era. They occupy a considerable place in the literature of the Śangam period, and it seemed highly probable that they should find a place in the earliest enumeration of the political divisions of the Tamil country next to the three main kingdoms of the South. Scholars therefore tentatively accepted the identity of the Satiyaputa with the Kōsar and their country with Kongu.