The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s3.6

c35.s3.6

The existence of well-known traditional boundaries must not be taken to justify the inference that they always agreed with the frontiers of the Chola kingdom, which latter, as a matter of fact, varied enormously. The limits of the Chola country, as determined by tradition, mark ethnic rather than political frontiers on the north and west, where they do not differ widely from the lines of demarcation between the Tamil and the other Dravidian languages—Telugu, Kanarese, Malayālam, and Tulu. Tamil, however, is as much the vernacular of the Pāndya as of the Chola region, and no clear ethnical distinction can be drawn between the peoples residing north and south of the Vellāru, the southern limit of the traditional Chola territory.