Early History of South India

EARLY HISTORY OF SOUTH INDIA Megalithic Culture and the connection with South India comes into Pre-Sangam Era prominence. • The Neolithic-Chalcolithic amalgam which seems • In later Tamil tradition, Agastya’s southerly march to have been round about 2000 B.C. continued upto is accounted for by the interesting legend that on about the middle of the fi rst millennium B.C. the occasion of Shiva’s marriage with Paravati, • It was then overlapped by the Megalithic culture Agastya had to be sent to the South to redress inhabited by the megaliths builder. They are known the balance of the earth which had been rudely not from their actual settlement which is rare but disturbed by the assemblage of all the gods and from their graves, these are called megaliths because sages in the North. they were encircled by big pieces of stones. • In the Ramayana, as they are onY their way • About the beginning of the Christian era the to Agastya’s ashrama, Rama tells his brother Megalith culture in South India was overlapped by Lakshmana how Agastya intent upon the good of what has been called ‘Andhra culture’ on account the world, overpowered deadly demon, thereby of the occurrence of Andhra coins. rendered the earth habitable. • This is the time when south India had a large • A beam of Indian cedar found in the place of volume of trade with Roman world. Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 B.C.), the teak logs • Again the culture and economic contacts between found in the temple of the Moon God at Ur at levels the north and the south paved the way for belonging to about the same age or a little later, and the introduction of material culture brought the Baveru Jataka which relates the adventures of from the north to the Deep South by traders, certain Indian merchants who took the fi rst peacock conquerors, Jainas, Buddhist and some Brahaman by sea to Babylon, all confi rm the existence of active missionaries. maritime intercourse between South India and its • The Vindhya Range was recognized as the southern western neighbours. limit of the Aryan land. Manu states distinctly • The Assyrian and Babylonian empires traded with that the country between the Himalayas and the India by sea from their ports on the Persian Gulf Vindhyas and between the eastern and western and continued to receive gold, spices and fragrant oceans comprised Aryavarta, the abode of the woods from India. Aryans. • In Chinese history, there are many references to • The Suttanipatta of the Buddhist canon records maritime traders bringing typical Indian products that teacher Bavari left Kosala and settled in a to China as far back as the seventh century B.C. village on the GodavariHRONICLE in the Assaka country in • The Arthashastra of Kautilya gives some information Dakshinapatha. of value about the trade between the North and the • His pupils are said to have gone north to meet South in the age of the early Mauryan Empire. Buddha and their route lay through Patitthana • The kingdoms of South India, together with Ceylon, (Paithan) inC the Mulaka country, Mahishmati are mentioned in the second and thirteenth rock (Mandhata) on the Narmada, and Ujjain. Bavari edicts of Ashoka. The list in the second edict is the is said to have been learned in the Vedas and more complete and includes the names of Chola, performed Vedic sacrifi ces. Pandya, Satiyaputa, Keralputa and Tambapanni • Kautilya speaks of the pearls and muslins of (Ceylon). the Pandyan country. The name of the Pandyan • The short Damili inscriptions found in the natural capital Madura recalls Mathura of the North, rock caverns of the South have many features in and Greek accounts,IAS as we have seen, narrate ACADEM the common with the similar but more numerous story of Herakles (in the context, Krishna) setting records of Sri Lanka and are among the earliest his daughter Pandaia to rule over the kingdom monuments of the Tamil country to which we may bordering on the southern sea. assign a date with some confi dence. • In the Mahabharata, the story of Rishi Agastya’s • The stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana © Chronicle IAS Academy ANCIENT 35 were well-known to the Tamil poets, and episodes Righteous Kuttuva’ (c.180), celebrated in song by from them are frequently mentioned. Paranar, one of the most famous and longest lived • The Tolkappiyam states that marriage as a poets of the Sangam Age. Senguttuvan’s life and sacrament attended with ritual was established in achievements have been embellished by legends of the Tamil country by the Aryans. a later time of which there are no traces in the two strictly contemporary poems, both by Paranar - the decade on the king in the ‘Ten Tens’, and a song in Sangam States the Purananuru. The only material achievement they 1. Chera Kingdom celebrate is a victorious war against the chieftain of The monarchies of the Cheras, the Cholas and Mohur. Paranar also says that Senguttuvan exerted the Pandyas were believed, at least in subsequent himself greatly on the sea, but gives no details. He ages, to be of immemorial antiquity, and the poems was given a title for driving back the sea, and this is of the Sangam attest the anxiety of all of them to taken to mean that he destroyed the effi ciency of the connect themselves with the events of the Great War sea as a protection to his enemies who relied on it. If between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The fi rst this is correct, he must have maintained a fl eet. For Chera monarch we hear of is Udiyanjeral (AD 130) the rest, we only learn that he was a skilled rider on who is said to have fed sumptuously both the armies horse and elephant, wore a garland of seven crowns of Kurukshetra, and thereby earned for himself the as Adhiraja, and was adept in besieging fortresses, title ‘Udiyanjeral of the great feeding’. besides being a great warrior and a liberal patron of the arts. Y The son of Udiyanjeral was Nedunjeral Adan who won a naval victory against some local enemy on the The epilogue to the decade adds a number of Malabar cost, and took captive several Yavana trad- new articulars, the most important bearing on the ers whom for some time he subjected to harsh treat- establishment of the Pattini Cult, i.e., the worship ment, for reasons that are not clear, but subsequently of Kannagi as the ideal wife. The stone for making released after obtaining a heavy ransom. He is said the image of Pattini, the Divine chaste wife, was to have fought many wars and spent many years in obtained after a fi ght with an Aryan chieftain and camp with his armies. He won victories against seven bathed in the Ganges before being brought to the crowned kings, and thus reached the superior rank of Chera country. All these events are narrated with an Adhiraja. He was called Imayavramban –‘He who numerous embellishments and in epic detail in the had the Himalaya for his boundary’- a title explained Silappadikaram, though whether this poem derives by the claim that he conquered all India and carved from the epilogue to decade, or the epilogue from the Chera emblem of the bow on the face of the the epic, is more than we can say. The antiquity and great mountain- an instance of poetic exaggeration popularity of the story of Kannagi and Kovalan and not uncommon in these poems. His capital is called the probable existence of other and earlier versions of Marandai. He fought a war with the contemporary the Kannagisaga which preceded the Silappadikaram Chola king in which both the monarchs lost their are fairly well-attested, and it is not unlikely that lives and their queens performed Sati. Senguttuvan took the lead in organizing the cult of Adan’s younger brother was ‘Kuttuvan of many Pattini, and was supported in his effort by the con- elephants’ who conquered Kongu and apparently temporary rulers of the Pandya and Chola countries extended the Chera power from the Western to the and of Ceylon as the Silappadikaram says. Eastern sea for a time. AdanHRONICLE had two sons by differ- Altogether fi ve monarchs of the line of Udiyanjeral ent queens. One of them was known as ‘the Chera belonging to three generations are mentioned in the with the Kalangay festoon and the fi bre crown’, the Padirruppattu, the number of years they are said to crown he wore at his coronation is said to have have ruled totals 201, while another three monarchs been made of PalmyraC fi bre and the festoon on it of the collateral line are said to have reigned for a contained Kalangay, a small black berry. It was not further 58 years in all. Their reigns surely cannot have altogether to be despised for the crown had a golden been successive, and we must therefore postulate a frame and festoons of precious pearls, but why the very considerable degree of overlapping. The Chera king had to wear such an extraordinary tiara is not Kingdom must have been a sort of family estate explained anywhere. He is said to have won successes in which all the grown-up males had a share and against the contemporary Adigaiman chieftain Anji interest what Kautilya calls kula-sangha, a family of Tagaddur and to haveIAS led an expedition againstACADEM group, and considers a very effi cient form of state Nannan whose territory lay to the North of Malabar, organization. in the Tulu country. He too was an Adhiraja wearing A similar clan-rule might also have prevailed in a garland of seven crowns.

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