A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c9.21

c9.21

There is no clear and specific reference to Agastya, the sage, much less to his exploits, in any of the early Tamil works now known—the anthologies of the *Saṅgam* Age; once indeed the phrase ‘Sage of Podiyil’ (Podiyil being the southernmost section of the Western Ghats, the Bettigo of Ptolemy) is applied to the star Canopus—an indication that the legends relating to Agastya were not unknown in the Tamil land at the time. His miraculous birth and his relation to Vasiṣṭha were known to the author of the poem *Maṇimekalai*. The same work also says that Agastya was a friend of the Chola king Kānta at whose request he released the Kāveri from his water pot, that Agastya's abode was in the Malaya mountains, and that he advised another legendary Chola monarch—he who overthrew the hanging castle (tūngeyil)—to institute at Puhār an annual festival in honour of Indra. Another story narrated by Naccinārkkiniyar (c. A.D. 1400), a commentator of the Middle Ages, on the authority of a more ancient writer, is that Rāvana who tyrannized over the extreme South was persuaded by Agastya when the latter came to Podiya hill to leave that land alone and betake himself to Lankā.