CHAP. XXV. BRAHMIN COLONISTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 411

From the time of Rama, who appears to have been assisted in his invasion of Lanka (Ceylon) by a Dravidian chief, now deified as the monkey God Hanuman, the influence of Hinduism rapidly increased, and caste prejudices spread over Southern India. But the annals are far too obscure, and too deeply buried under extravagant fable, to enable us to form any idea of the time and manner of the complete inoculation of the Dravidian races with Brahminical legends, caste observances, and Hindu religious ideas. It is clear, however, that "to the early Brahminical colonists the Dravidians are indebted for the higher arts of life, and the first elements of literary culture."

The Brahmins came to Southern India not as conquerors, but as peaceful settlers and instructors; and their influence was obtained through their superior civilization and learning. They gave the name of Sudra to all the upper and middle classes of native Dravidians, while the servile classes were not, as in Hindustan, called Sudras, but Pariars. Thus, while in the north a Sudra is a low-caste man, in the south he ranks next to a Brahmin.

It is said that, after the avatur of Rama, pilgrims came in great numbers to visit the scenes of his triumphs, and, settling in the country, cleared land for cultivation, and laid the foundations of future principalities. One of these settlers was a man named Pandya, of the Vellaler or agricultural caste, who established himself in the south; and his descendant Kula Sekhara, son of Sampanna Pandya, was the first king of Madura. Some centuries elapsed, probably five, before the foundation of the city of Madura, during which the settlers were occupied in clearing the ground, and forming themselves into an organized state; and it has been conjectured that the building of the capital was commenced

5 Caldwell, p. 2.

between 500 and 600 B.C. Previously the kings of the Pandyan dynasty resided at a place called Kurkhi.

Another tradition states that a merchant lost his way in the forests, and discovered an ancient temple dedicated to Siva and his wife Durga, which had been erected by the God Indra. The merchant was directed by the God to announce to the Pandyan king, named Kula Sekhara, that it was the will of Siva that a city should be erected on the spot. Kula Sekhara, therefore, cleared the forest, rebuilt the temple, and founded a city. On the completion of the work a shower of nectareal dew fell from heaven, spreading a sweet film on the ground, and hence the name of Madura (sweet)." The wife of Siva became incarnate as the daughter and successor of this prince, under the name of Minakshi; and Siva himself as Sundara, or the handsome, was her mortal husband. Thus the Pandyan kings, like many of the dynasties of ancient Greece, placed their gods at the head of their genealogical tree. The immigration of a colony of Aryan Brahmins from Magadha into the Madura country, and the commencement of Tamil civilization and literature, have been placed, by Mr. Caldwell and others, in about the seventh century B.C.

At the Christian æra the kings of Madura were very powerful, and had extended their dominions over the whole of the peninsula. They sent two embassies to Rome-the first in the eighteenth year after the death of Julius Cæsar, which found the Emperor Augustus at Tarragona; and the second six years later, when he was at Samos. Subsequently

the kingdom was reduced in size by the independence of

Kolki of the Periplus; perhaps Kilkhar, on the Coromandel coast, opposite Rameswaram.

In Sanscrit.

In 1802 a pot of Roman coins was dug up near Dharaparum, in Coimbatore, of the Emperors Augus

tus and Tiberius, with Cæsarea marked on them, the place where they were struck. Buchanan's Travels, ii. p. 318.

One coin, a Roman aureus, has been found in a cairn on the Neilgherry hills.-Captain H. Congreve's Antiquities of the Neilgherry Hills.

Malabar, the rise of Chira in the west, of the state of Chola

9

in the east, and of Ramnad in the south. A long list of kings is mentioned in the native annals, with numerous wars, first against the Budhists, and afterwards with the Rajahs of Chola and Ramnad.

The most flourishing period of Madura history appears to have been during the reigns of Vamsa Sekhara and his son Vamsa Churamani, in about 200 A.D. They erected grand temples and palaces, and the more ancient and massive parts of edifices still in existence probably date from their reigns. A college, called Sangattar, was founded at Madura, at this time, for the cultivation of the Tamil language and literature.10 The first stimulus was given to this movement by the famous Rishi or sage, Aghastya, the leader of a colony of Brahmins, whose migration to the south is mentioned in the Ramayana. He was a chief agent in diffusing the worship of Siva in the Deccan; and it is supposed that there was a second man of learning of the same name in the eighth or ninth century. Aghastya is said to have been the offspring of two gods, Mithra and Varuna, and he received the Brahminical string from seven holy prophets. He became a most wonderful and enlightened personage, and composed works on medicine, moral and natural philosophy, and botany, in high Tamil verse, called Yellacanum, greatly improving and refining his adopted language. Aghastya's memory is

9 The author of the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea mentions Nelcynda (Neliceram), Paralia (Malabar), and Comari (Cape Comorin), as under King Pandion (Regio Pandionis); and Dr. Vincent thinks that the Pandyan Kings of Madura lost Malabar between the time of the author of the Periplus and that of Ptolemy; because the latter does not allude to Pandion until Cape Comorin is passed. Chira is the modern Coimbatore, and the capital of the Chira state was at

Caroor. The state of Chola is the modern Tanjore. The word Pandya is probably of Sanscrit origin, but the masculine termination of on is Tamil.

10 In Tamil few Brahmins have written anything worthy of preservation: but the language has been cultivated and developed with immense zeal and success by native Sudras."

-Caldwell, p. 33. Tamil literature, now extant, dates from the eighth or ninth century: p. 68.

deeply venerated by the Tamil people, and his healing spirit is still believed to hover amongst the mountains of Courtallum, in Tinnevelly;1 where he is worshipped as Agast-isvara, or the star Canopus.

From the ninth to the tenth centuries the Jain religion predominated in Madura. The Jains were animated by a national and anti-Brahminical feeling, and it is chiefly to them that Tamil is indebted for its high culture and independence of Sanscrit. They were expelled in the reign of Sundara Pandya, at about the time when Marco Polo visited India. The Mohammedans first made an inroad into the Deccan in tke reign of Alla-ud-deen of Delhi in 1293, they crossed the Kistna in 1310, and advanced as far as Rameswara in 1374.

After reigning for many centuries the Pandyan dynasty became tributary to the powerful Brahminical kingdom of Bijayanuggur in Mysore, in about 1380 A.D. A list of more than seventy kings is given in the annals.2 But in the fifteenth century an officer of the Bijayanuggur Rajah, named Nagama Naik, was installed as feudatory King of Madura, and founded the Naik dynasty. He procured the cession of Trichinopoly from the Chola Rajah, and his son Viswanath Naik distributed the district of Tinnevelly amongst his adherents of the Totia caste, the ancestors of the Poligars of Tinnevelly. His descendant Tirumalla Naik, who succeeded in 1623 A.D., had a long and flourishing reign, and public edifices still furnish splendid proofs of his wealth and magnificence. He died in 1657 A.D.; and the Naik dynasty, which came to an end in 1730 A.D.,3 was followed by obscure feudatories of the Nawabs of the Carnatic, who eventually made way for British rule.

1 Dr. Ainslie, in his Materia Medica, gives a list of twenty works by Aghastya, chiefly on medical subjects, some of them translated from Sanscrit.

2 For a list of kings of Madura, of the Pandyan and Naik dynasties, see a paper in the Asiatic Society's Jour

nals, by H. H. Wilson; from MS. collections of the late Colonel Mackenzie.

3 Tanjore was seized by the Mahrattas in 1675. The last Naik sovereign of Madura was installed as a tributary of the Nawab of the Carnatic.

I went early one morning, with Mr. Levinge the Collector, to visit the great pagoda of Madura, some of the oldest parts of which date from the reigns of Pandyan kings in the eighth century. It covers twenty acres of ground, and is surrounded by a high stone wall painted in red and white stripes, the Hindoo holy colours. The walls form a perfect square, and in the centre of each side there is a lofty gopuram or tower. These towers are broad, solid, and very lofty masses of brick, in the form of a truncated pyramid. From the base to the summit they are one mass of sculptured figures, representing all the gods in Hindu mythology, rising tier above tier to the summit, and decreasing in size with the height. Each end of the top of the gopuram is ornamented by a fanshaped structure of brick-work, representing the hood of a cobra. We entered the pagoda by a gateway in the left corner of the wall facing the great choultry built by Tirumalla Naik. Here the warden of the pagoda was waiting for us, who had arrived just before in his palkee. He is of Sudra caste, a man advanced in years, and of much reputed holiness; and he received us in a state of nudity, with the exception of a yellow gauze scarf, his belly, chest, and forehead being smeared with holy ashes. A crowd of Brahmins accompanied us.

A long corridor leads from the entrance to the cloister, with a roof supported by stone pillars, between which elephants were stationed, gaudily painted and caparisoned. The cloister is the finest part of the interior of the pagoda. The walls are covered with paintings representing the marvellous adventures of Krishna, and the pillars supporting the roof of the galleries are roughly carved. The central space is occupied by "the tank of the golden lotus," with very dirty green water, and stone steps leading down from the cloister. The view from one corner of this tank is very striking; with green stagnant water as a foreground, rows of fantastically