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Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya. 



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According to the Madura Parana, the residence of the Pandya 

 kings was for many ages at a place called Kurk'hi, not improbably 

 the Kolkhi of the Periplus, a city subject to the Pandya king, as the 

 author observes, and, perhaps, as D'Anville notices,* still to be traced 

 in the appellation Kilkhar, or Kilakarai,t on the Coromandel coast, 

 opposite to Rameswaram. One of the Pandya monarch.?, named 

 Sampanna Pandya, invited the Chola and Chera princes to the wedding 

 of his son. On their way to Kurkhi they were caught by violent rains, 

 and compelled, by the flooded state of the country, to remain encamped 

 on one spot for a month, in memory of which event the Pandya king 

 built a city there, naming it Kaly ana-pur, which was for some time 

 the capital of his son and successor, Kula Sek'hara. 



Kula Sek'hara, in the commencement of his reign, built a new city 

 about two leagues to the north of Cape Kumari, which he named after 

 himself, Kula Sek'hara Pattan : he resided, however, at Kalyana-pur. 

 It happened that a meichant returning from a journey to Malayalam, 

 or Malabar, lost his way in the forests of Chandragiri, the hilly dis- 

 trict west of Madura, and its vicinity. "Whilst exploring his track alone 

 he discovered an ancient temple, dedicated to Siva, as the Mula Linga, 

 or Choka Nayaka, and Durga, as Minakshi Amman. The temple had 

 been erected by Indra when performing penance in the Dandaka forest, 

 for the expiation of the sin of murdering Vritrasura, who, although a 

 demon, was a Brahman. The merchant, himself a devout worshipper 

 of Siva, paid his homage to the deity, and was, in consequence, favour- 

 ed with a personal communication, directing him to announce the dis- 

 covery to the Raja, and the will of the god, that a city should be found- 

 ed on the spot. The same injunction was conveyed in a vision to the 

 prince, and the concurrence of these intimations established their 

 divine origin. Kula Sek'hara accordingly repaired to the place, cleared 

 the forest, rebuilt the temple with great architectural magnificence, 



consulted, is entitled a translation of the Pandya Rajakal ; the original of this is a 

 Tamil prose work, sometimes attributed to the three most eminent of the first pro- 

 fessors of the Madura college Narakira, Bana, and Kapila. The accuracy of this notion 

 may he questioned, as it rests solely upon the work closing with the reign of Vams'a 

 Churamani, under whom these writers are said to have flourished ; and it is contra- 

 dicted by the tenor of the last sentence, which speaks of the literary institutes first 

 promulgated by, or exemplified by these teachers having been communicated to their 

 disciples, and thus handed down through consecutive generations. The work itself 

 agrees closely with the Madura Purdna, and is, therefore, probably, as well as it, a 

 branch from the same Sanskrit stem, the Hdlusya MahaPmya, which work is also 

 in the collection, and has been compared with the translations. — Mackenzie Collection, 

 I. p. 91, exxi. 



* D'Anville Antiquite Geographique, 122. Also Vincent's Periplus, ii. 443 : the 

 general identity is beyond question by its being then, as now, the scene of the pearl 



fishing. 



-t Sec Journal Royal Asiatic Society, No. V. p.lG9, 



