Historical Geography of Ancient India c7.451

c7.451

Pāṇḍya.—The Pāṇḍya country to which Pāṇini refers in his Aṣṭādhyāyī (4. 1. 171) comprised Madura and Tinnevelly districts (S.I.I., I, pp. 51, 59, 63, etc.). According to Ptolemy it was known as Pandion with Modoura as its royal city (McCrindle, Ancient India as described by Ptolemy, Majumdar Ed., p. 183). It was conquered by Rājendra Coḍa. The Pāṇḍya kingdom also comprised Travancore in the 1st century of the Christian era. Originally it had its capital on Kolkai on the Tāmraparṇī river in Tinnevelly, and its later capital was Madurā (Dakṣiṇa Mathurā). In the Mahābhārata and in many Jātakas the Pāṇḍus are spoken of as the ruling race of Indraprastha. Kātyāyana in his Vārttika derives Pāṇḍya from Pāṇḍu. The country of the Pāṇḍyas is also mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa (IV, Ch. 41), where Sugrīva is said to have sent his monkey-soldiers in quest of Sītā. In the Mahābhārata (Sabhāparva, Ch. 31, V. 17) it is stated that Sahadeva, the youngest of the Pāṇḍu princes, went to the Dakṣiṇāpatha after having conquered the king of the Pāṇḍyas. The Purāṇas also refer to the Pāṇḍyas (Mārkaṇḍeya, Ch. 57, V. 45; Vāyu, 45, 124; Matsya, 112, 46). Aśoka’s Rock Edicts II and XIII mention the Pāṇḍyas whose territory lay outside his empire. Aśoka was in friendly terms with the Pāṇḍyas who probably had two kingdoms, one including Tinnevelly on the south and extending as far north as the highlands in the neighbourhood of the Coimbatore Gap, the other including the Mysore State. Strabo (XV, 4, 73) mentions an embassy sent to Augustus Caesar by a king ‘Pandion’, possibly a Pāṇḍya of the Tamil country. (For further details, vide B. C. Law, Tribes in Ancient India, pp. 190ff.)