dopt his
view, great as is the weight due to his opinion on any such question.

Extraordinary darkness hangs over the chronology of 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 Kun Pandya _alias_ Sundara,
reigned in the latter half of the 11th century. "The Sri Tala Book, which
appears to have been written about 60 years ago, and was probably compiled
from brief Tamil chronicles then in existence, states that the Pandya race
became extinct upon the death of Kun 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 end
of the genuine Pandya Dynasty and the Mahomedan invasion; whilst lists of
numerous princes who reigned in this period have been handed down. Now we
have just seen that the Mahomedan invasion took place in 1311, and we must
throw aside the traditions and the lists altogether if we suppose that the
Sundara Pandi of 1292 was the last prince of the Old Line. Indeed, though
the indication is faint, the manner in which Wassaf speaks of Polo's
Sundara and his brothers as having established themselves in different
territories, and as in constant war with each other, is suggestive of the
state of unsettlement which the Sri Tala and the traditions describe.

There is a difficulty in co-ordinating these four or five brothers at
constant war, whom Polo found in possession of different provinces of
Ma'bar about 1290, with the Devar Kalesa, of whom Wassaf speaks as slain
in 1310 after a prosperous reign of