Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎495r] (114/238)

3 27
The Age of Mdnikka Vdfagar.
records events that took place more than 35 ° y6 ars
previously. This early part of the chronicle, therefore,
cannot have the same confidence placed in it as that later
portion from the point at which it begins to deal with
contemporaneous events.
It is not stated in the Mahawansa who the Tamil
usurpers were of 200 years before 113 a.d. It is left
uncertain whether they were Cholas. We know from
inscriptions of Asoka'“ that the P&ndya kingdom was in
existence 250 years before Christ ; and geographical con
siderations render it obvious that such an expedition
would at that period be more easily effected from the
Pdndya than from the Chola dominions. The complete
absorption of the Pdndya kingdom by the Cholas did not
take place till 1064 a.d., but there probably was a previous
gradual process of absorption, an intermingling rather than
a conquest,t and we find that from 1037 to 1065 a.d. there
were usurpers in Ceylon, one of whom in 1052 bore the
suspiciously South Indian royal designation of Vikrama
Pandu. And though this would at first sight suggest a
Pdndu and not a Chola invasion, it is to be borne in mind
that the Chola kings are known to have taken also the
designation of Pandu.£ The second Gajabahu reigned
1142 a.d.,§ and from 1065, the end of the usurpation period,
to 1142, a period of seventy-seven years, is not very long,
and the memory of the usurpation might have sufficiently sur
vived to lead to reprisals on the part of the later Gajabahu.
It seems more probable, therefore, that the date of the
Gajabahu to whom the Mahawansa and Silappadhikaram
refer as having invaded the Chola country was 1142 a.d.,
rather than 113 a.d., and that the period of the last Sangam,
and that of Senguttavan Chera, would be about the close
of the eleventh and first half of the twelfth century, just
prior to or coincident with the time of Kambar.
* See “ History of Tinnivelly,” p. 12.
+ See “ History of Tinnivelly,” p. 28. t Ibid.
§ Duff’s “Indian Chronology,” p. 321.