The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s4.4

c35.s4.4

A close study of ancient Tamil literature has recently led to the suggestion that the Pallavas were originally connected with Ceylon. An examination of the Tamil poems, *Maṇimēkalai* and *Chilappatikāran*, seems to indicate that the destruction by the sea of the Chola capital, Puhār or Kāviripaddinam, must have occurred before the close of the third quarter of the second century A. D., when Gajabāhu's reign in Ceylon came to an end, and that Kiḷḷi Vaḷavan or Neḍumuḍi Kiḷḷi, the Chola king, then moved his capital to Uraiyūr.¹ Quite recently, Mr. Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam of Colombo,² on the strength of a further study of these Tamil epics, asserts that this Chola king had a *liaison* with a Nāga princess, daughter of Vaḷaivānam, the Nāga king of Maṇipallavam, which can be identified with the Jaffna peninsula, at that early date an island off the coast of Ceylon. Of this union was born a son, known as Toṇḍaimān Iḷantirāyan,³ who some time in the latter half of the second century A. D. was created by his father (Kiḷḷi Vaḷavan) king of *Toṇḍaimandalam*, as distinct from *Cholamandalam*, with his capital at Kāñchī. The dynasty, of which Toṇḍaimān Iḷantirāyan thus became the first representative, took its title from the second half of the word Maṇipallavam, the home of his Nāga mother, who was regarded as inferior in rank to his Chola father. According to this view, therefore, the Pallavas, who were a dynasty rather than a tribe or clan, were descended on one side from the Chola family of Uraiyūr and on the other from the Nāga rulers of what is now the Jaffna peninsula in Ceylon.⁴ The persistent hostility of the Pallavas to the territorial Tamil states and the fact that tradition does not assign any recognized territorial limits to the Pallava dominion¹ are indications that the Pallavas were distinct in race from the Tamils, and that their rule was superimposed upon that of the Rājas of the Pāṇḍya, Chola, and Chera countries, the three states which together covered the whole area of the south, according to constant tradition. The possible origin of the Pallavas, as suggested by ancient Tamil poetry, does not appear to conflict with known facts and may perhaps offer an additional reason for the enmity which unquestionably existed between the Pallavas and the Tamil kingdoms. Professor S. K. Aiyangar holds that the historical Pallavas were feudatories of the Satavahanas of the Deccan and belonged to the Naga family.