A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.7

c12.7

Doubtless what has survived is only a part of the much vaster literature of these remote times. An inscription of the early tenth century A.D. mentions among the achievements of the early Pāndyas the translation of the *Mahābhārata* into Tamil and the establishment of a Sangam at Madura. This translation has been lost, though poems composed by *Perundēvanār* who sang the *Bhāratam* form the invocations placed at the beginning of six out of the eight anthologies named above. Parts of a Tamil *Bhāratam* by a Perundēvanār have come down to us, but the author was a contemporary of Nandivarman III Pallava (ninth century A.D.) and probably different from his namesake of the Sangam anthologies.