A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.4

c12.4

THE inscription of Khāravela briefly mentioned in an earlier chapter contains the only early epigraphic reference to the kingdoms of the Tamil country after the Aśoka inscriptions. Khāravela ruled in Kalinga in the first half of the second century B.C., and in the eleventh year of his reign (c. 165 B.C.) is said to have destroyed a confederacy of Tamil states—Tramiradeśasanghātam—which was 113 years old at the time, and had long been a source of danger. The same inscription records that Khāravela caused ‘numerous pearls in hundreds’ to be brought from the Pāndya to Kalinga, and perhaps also horses, elephants, jewels and rubies. In itself a difficult document, the gaps in the inscription and its extremely worn-out condition render its meaning very uncertain. Of the Tamil confederacy and its aims, of how it became a danger to Kalinga, and of the measures taken by Khāravela to avert the danger and the new relations he established with the Pāndyan kings we hear nothing more from any other source.