No. 34. — 1887.1 POLONNARUWA. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE BY Me. T. BERWICK. 



In his " A Year's Work at Polonnaruwa " Mr. Burrows discusses a 

 supposed difficulty in the interpretation of the words Ganga-vansa, 

 which occur in the name of the queen of Nissanka Malla inscribed on 

 the " Galpota" as Ganga-vansa Kalydna Mahd Deivin Wahanse ; and he 

 endeavours to solve the question by the theory that the word trans- 

 literated ganga is really gaha, and that Ganga-vansa would stand for 

 Gowi-vansa, or " the Wellala caste." 



Having looked into the matter since the Paper was read before the 

 Royal Asiatic Society, I think there is no real difficulty in the 

 interpretation, and every reason for believing that Dr. Miiller and 

 the local Pandit referred to by Mr. Burrows were right in reading 

 the word as ganga. It is notorious enough that the Indian sovereigns 

 of Ceylon were in the practice of getting their queens from India, and 

 from the ancient and royal dynasties there, one of the most ancient 

 and renowned of which was the Ganga dynasty, house, or vansa. 

 The country called {Kongu-desa, the heart of which lay in what are now 

 the districts of Salem and Coimbatore), had, during many ages, an impor- 

 tant place in the political geography of South India, and " we have a 

 very definite account of a long dynasty of Ganga, or Kongu, kings " 

 who reigned over it — a dynasty which, " on the authority of the Markara 



copper plates, has been believed to have lasted from the beginning of 



the Christian era down to the year 894 a.d., about which time it was 

 overthrown by the Cholas." It has been said, indeed, that these plates 

 are forgeries, and that the first king of the true Gariga dynasty 

 Kongani-varma Raya I., or Madhava I., "of the Kanvayana family, 

 and of the Jahnavi or Ganga race," ruled there only from about the 

 beginning of the 10th century. But it appears from independent 

 sources that aKadamba king, Mrigesa-varma, achieved a conquest over 

 the "Gangas" in the 5th or 6th century, and a list of twenty-one 

 Ganga kings of Kongu-desa, including and subsequent to Madhava I., is 

 given in the " Kongu-desa Rajakkal." 



A considerable time after the final conquest of the Kongu-desa in 

 1080 a.d., another line of Gayga kings ruled over Orissa. This- 



