18 



Report on the Mackenzie Manuscripts. 



[JULT 



in the Pandiyaii country ; from whom this tribe received an additional 

 village with dependencies. A few names of the genealogy occur, 

 coming down to the writer, who terms himself the twenty-ninth in 

 succession to the chieftainship. 



Remark.— Few of the accounts of the southern Poligars, go up to so 

 high a period of past time as this one. Taking the twenty -nine suc- 

 cessions, to the chieftainship, at the usual average of thirty-three 

 years to a generation, this would carry up the early portion of this ac- 

 count to about A. D. 800 which accords tolerably well, with the known 

 period of the accession of the first of the northern viceroys of Madura ' 

 that is about Sal. Sac. 1430 or A. D. 1558. There is a want of dates, 

 and of the names of Pandiyan kings, in the early portion of the narra- 

 tive, which is to be regretted ; but the most important fact throughout is 

 the extermination of the aboriginal Curumbars by this tribe, adding 

 to the evidences on that subject already afforded ; and shewing that 

 the H ndus, as colonists, wherever they came exterminated the earlier 

 possessors of the soil, and were not themselves Aborigines, as we Eu- 

 ropeans, for a long time, supposed. As adding an item of evidence in 

 proof of this great, and leading fact, I am of opinion that this paper 

 merits a full, and circumstantial, translation. 



Section 4. Account of Caveri-patnam (situated on the ancient dc" 

 bouchure of the Carerz-river). 



No exact date can be given; but, from various reasons stated in the 

 paper, the origin of the place is fixed at about nine hundred years agOj 

 that is circiter A. D. 900. For four hundred years it is stated to have 

 been in a flourishing condition, and to have covered, both in length and 

 breadth, about ten miles each way (perhaps somewhat exaggerated, 

 even allowing for the mode of building towns in the east). One por- 

 tion of its site is now submerged by the sea. There is a family of 

 merchants very distinguished at this place, whose history involves 

 many ancient matters connected with this town, and as such is given 

 to the following purport. 



A string of salutations to gods and poets, with a mention of distin- 

 guished 5a/t'a-fanes, introduces a reference to Vara-guna-pandiyan, 

 tracing (erroneously I imagine) the derivation of the name to that 

 king's decUning to eat rice, the food offered to the god, and substitut- 

 ing for his own diet, the grain called Faracu (Paspalum frumenta- 

 ceura). This Faragitna {ov Varacuiia) Pawrfe^aw, having by accident 



