1836.] Translated from the Mackenzie Manuscripts. 351 



Dandaca covered the whole extent of the southern peninsula j and 

 the rude inhabitants are designated as Rdcshasas, monsters ; or Vana- 

 ras, monkeys. From considerable familiarity with the former term in 

 extensive reading of Hindu production-, 1 feel grounded in stating that, 

 though the idea it bears, poetically considered, is that of evil genii, or 

 supernatural monsters, yet, being reduced to truth and simplicity, 

 it denotes, in very frequent usage, races or tribes hostile to the genuine 

 Hindus. The other term 1 think to have been mistaken by the nor- 

 thern civilized Hindus themselves : it denoted with them monkeys ; but, 

 as used by their bard Vulmica for the tribes of the south, I imagine it 

 designates the idea compounded of the word vana, a wilderness, and 

 nara a man, that is, a wild or an uncivilized* man : and to this sense 

 the fable of Hanuman the chief monkey, and that of his army of mon- 

 keys, are, in my opinion, to be reduced. Those who have seen the 

 Cotiaries and Maravas will readily consider them to differ from all 

 family likeness of the Hindus ; and, as their visages often resemble 

 baboons more than men, it would require even less than the ardent 

 poetical imagination of a Valmica to induce the employment of an 

 equivocal word, which would so aptly seem to convey the idea impart- 

 ed by their appearance. 



It would seem that, when Rama had succeeded in his war with 

 Havana on Lanca, or Ceylon, he appointed some special guardians 

 from among the natives to be custodes of the idol, and temple, which 

 he had constructed on the then peninsula, but now island, of Ramise- 

 ram. The word Sethupathi, of future frequent occurrence, means lord, 

 or guardian, of the local peninsula. A Telugu manuscript, of the 

 Mackenzie collection, states that sevenf persons were appointed, from 

 among the inhabitants of the Ramnad country, to be the guardians of 

 the coasts, by the Chacravertis, or powerful Hindu sovereigns ; a term 

 quite indefinite, except that it de ignates only uncontaminated Hindus. 

 It is asserted, in an unpublished Mackenzie MS. entitled Pdndiya. 

 rajdkal, that the Maravas became at one period so powerful and formi- 

 dable, as to over-run the neighbouring Pundiya kingdom, to subjugate 

 it, and to rule it for a considerable period of time. Though I once 

 doubted the fact, yet this manuscript commands my assent. I regret 

 that I did not meet with it in time to publish a translation of it, with 

 other MSS. bearing on ihe history of that country ; but it is not the 

 only one claiming publication, and all may some day be printed toge- 



* Professor Wilson, in his Sanscrit Dictionary, I observe has rendered the word by— 

 P monkey, a sylvan;''' and he speaks of it as compounded of nara a man, and the prefix 

 m indicating resemblance, or, like to a man. Either way the equivocal meaning of the 

 term is the same when applied to the wild races of the extreme south, 



* Oriental Historical MSS. Appendix G. 



