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334

BOOK III.

MARCO POLO

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In the third volume of Elliot we find some of the same main facts, with some differences and greater detail, as recounted by Amfr Khusru. Bir Pandiya and Sundara Pandiya are the Rais of Ma'har, and are at war with one another, when the army of Alaúddin, after reducing Bilál Deo of Dwára Samudra, descends upon Ma'bar in the beginning of 131i (p. 87 seqq.).

We see here two rulers in Ma'bar, within less than twenty years, bearing the name of Sundara Pandi. And, strange to say, more than a century before, during the continental wars of Parákráma Bahu I., the most martial of Singhalese kings (A.D. 1153- I 186), we find another Kulasaíkera (=Kalesa of Wassáf), King of Madura, with another híra Pdndi for son, and another Sundara Pandi Rája, figuring in the history of the Pandionis Regio. But let no one rashly imagine that there is a confusion in the chronology here. The Hindu Chronology of the continental states is dark and confused enough, but not that of Ceylon, which in this, as in sundry other respects, comes under Indo-Chinese rather than Indian analogies. (See Tumour's Ceylonese Epito;ne, pp. 41-43 ; and/ A. S. B. XLI. Pt. I. p. 197 seqq.)

" In a note with which Dr. Caldwell favoured me some time before the first publication of this work, he considers that the Sundar Bandi of Polo and the Persian Historians is undoubtedly to be identified with that Sundara Pandi Devar, who is in the Tamul Catalogues the last king of the ancient Pandya line, and who was (says I)r. Caldwell,) " succeeded by Mahomedans, by a new line of Pandyas, by the Náyak Kings, by the Nabobs of Arcot, and finally by the English. He became for a time a Jaina, but was reconverted to the worship of Siva, when his name was changed from h un or Á ul ja, ` Crook-backed,' to Sundara, ` Beautiful,' in accordance with a change which then took place, the Saivas say, in his personal appearance. Probably

his name, from the beginning, was Sundara    In the inscriptions belonging to
the period of his reign he is invariably represented, not as a joint king or viceroy, but as an absolute monarch ruling over an extensive tract of country, including the Chola country or Tanjore, and Conjeveram, and as the only possessor for the time being of the title Pandi Devar. It is clear from the agreement of Rashiduddin with Marco Polo that Sundara Pandi's power was shared in some way with his brothers, but it seems certain also from the inscription that there was a sense in which he alone was king."

I do not give the whole of Dr. Caldwell's remarks on this subject, because, the 3rd volume of Elliot not being then published, he had not before him the whole of the information from the Mussulman historians, which shows so clearly that two princes bearing the name of Sundara Pandi are mentioned by them, and because I cannot see my way to adopt his view, great as is the weight due to his opinion on any such question.

Extraordinary darkness hangs over the chronology of the the South Indian kingdoms, as we may judge from the fact that Dr. Caldwell would have thus placed at the end of the 13th century, on the evidence of Polo and Rashiduddin, the reign of the last of the genuine Pandya kings, whom other calculations place earlier even

by centuries.   Thus, to omit views more extravagant, Mr. Nelson, the learned
official historian of Madura, supposes it on the whole most probable that pun Pandya alias Sundara, reigned in the latter half of the II th century. " The Sri Tala Book, which appears to have been written about 6o years ago, and was probably compiled from brief Tamil chronicles then in existence, states that the Pandya race became extinct upon the death of Kún Pandya; and the children of concubines and of younger brothers who (had) lived in former ages, fought against one another, split up the country into factions, and got themselves crowned, and ruled one in one place, another in another. But none of these families succeeded in getting possession of Madura, the capital, which consequently fell into decay. And further on it tells us, rather inconsistently, that up to A.D. 1324 the kings ` who ruled the Madura country, were part of the time Pandyas, • at other times foreigners.' " And a variety of traditions referred to by Mr. Nelson appears to interpose such a period of unsettlement and shifting and divided sovereignty, extending over a considerable time, between the

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