A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.23

c12.23

Āy was one of the many vēl chieftains ruling in several parts of the Tamil country. The vēls claimed to have issued from the sacrificial fire-pit of a northern sage and cherished other legends of their connexion with Vishnu and Agastya, and of one of their ancestors having shot down a tiger which was about to attack a sage in the midst of his penance—legends very similar to those of the Hoysalas in later times. The country he ruled lay round about the Podiya hill, the southernmost section of the Western Ghats; and the Greek geographer Ptolemy says that one ‘Aioi’ was ruling in the country which included Cape Comorin and mount Bettigo. Āy seems to have been a dynastic name borne by all the kings of the line as a prefix to their personal names. The patron of the brahmin poet of Uraiyūr was also called Aṇḍiran, a Sanskrit word meaning hero. His country is described as fertile and teeming with elephants which he presented liberally to his favourites. He is said to have presented the God Śiva with a cloth of very fine texture given to him by a nāga chieftain Nīla.