Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c17.9

c17.9

As a matter of fact however the Kula or tribal mountain called Malaya cannot be located in any other place excepting the southern end of the Western Ghats although there were probably other hills called Malaya which may have given rise to the ‘conflicting evidences’. We know that the hilly region of Cental Ceylon was known by the name Malaya and one of the heirs of the Ceylonese kings was often styled Malaya-rāja. A Viṣṇukuṇḍin inscription speaks of Prince Mādhavavarman II, who had his headquarters at Amarapura (i.e. Amarāvatī near Vijayavāḍa), as Trikūṭa-Malaya-ādhipati, probably indicating ‘governor of the provinces of Trikūṭa and Malaya.’ Since the name Malaya is derived from the Dravidian word malai meaning ‘hill,’ it is not improbable that this word affixed to the end of the names of certain South Indian hills was often Sanskritised as malaya and thus gave rise to a confusion. The tendency to Sanskritisation is still noticed in the name Madra-maṇḍala applied to the Madras State (in spite of the fact that the fact that the ancient Madra people lived in the Punjab with their capital at Śākala, i.e. modern Sialkot), and we can understand the working of the mind of a Sanskritist if he would refer to Tiru-malai and Anna-malai respectively as Śri-malaya (or Tri-malaya) and Anna-malaya. But there is absolutely no doubt as to the location of the celebrated Malaya Kul-ācala (Kula-parvata) at the southern end of the Western Ghats.