1837.] Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya. 



181 



constructed a splendid palace for the royal residence, and founded an 

 extensive and stately city. The gods beheld the progress of his labours 

 with interest, and, on their completion, a shower of hectareal dew de- 

 scended from heaven, spreading a sweet film upon the ground, which 

 gave the appellation Madhura (sweet) to the new city. The stately 

 monuments, of which the vestiges are still to be seen in Madura, are the 

 work of much more modern times ; but the classical authorities al- 

 ready referred to, establish, for that city, an existence of venerable 

 duration. The gradual transfer of the Pandya capital from a southerly 

 to a more northerly site, is in harmony with the tradition of the coun- 

 try being first cleared and cultivated by pilgrims to Rameswaram. It 

 may be here observed, that the prevailing form of the Hindu religion 

 in the south of the peninsula was, at the commencement of the Chris- 

 tian era, and sometime before it, most probably that of Siva, as, besides 

 the positive testimony of these legends, the name of the cape, Komari, 

 or Kumari, the virgin, is, as a mythological appellative, restricted to 

 Durga; and that it was in this place a mythological name is proved 

 by the author of the Periplus* who states, that persons purposing to 

 lead a religious and widowed life bathe at Comar, because, as the his- 

 tory relates, a goddess formerly used to perform her ablutions monthly 

 at this spot. 



The second Pandya prince is named Malaya Dhwaj a, of whom his 

 extreme devotion to the tutelary divinities of his capital is the only pe- 

 culiarity recorded.! In return for his attachment, the goddess Minak- 



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Paolino says, the convent and the custom still existed in his time. — Vincent Peei- 

 tlus, ii. 443. Sec, also, Viaggio Di Fra Bartolomeo. 



■f The traditions of the south, however, make him a more important character, and 

 consider him as the father of Chitrangada, the wife of Arjuna. This opinion is grounded 

 on a section of the Sabha Parvan of the Mahabharat, where Sahadeva, whilst performing 

 his military career in the Dekhin, is described as having an interview with his father-in- 

 law Malaya Dhwaja, king of Pandya. This section, however, is perhaps peculiar to the 

 copies of the Mahabharat, current in the peninsula, as it has no place in a fine copy in 

 Devanagari character, in my possession. In the first chapter, too, it is there said that 

 the father of Chitrangada is Chitravahana, king of Manipur, to which Arjuna comes on 

 leaving Kalinga. The Telugu translation of the Adi Parvan agrees in tfre names of the 

 parties, but places Manipur south of the Kaveri. How far, therefore, it is safe to identi- 

 fy Malaya Dhwaja with Chitravahana, and Manipur with Madhura, must depend upon the 

 verification of the authenticity of different copies of the Mahabharat. The result of a 

 careful collation of seven copies at Benares, examined at my request by Captain Fell, 

 may be regarded as fatal to the identification, not one of them containing the section in 

 question, or the name of Malaya Dhwaja. The Bhagayat calls the bride of Arjuna, Ulupi, 

 the daughter of the serpent king of Manipura, 



