from their intelligence, and their encouragement of native literature, have been appropriately styled “the Ptolemies of India.”  Their dominions, which covered the extremity of the peninsula, comprehended the greater portion of the Coromandel coast, extending to Canara on the western coast, and southwards to the sea.[2] Their kingdom was subsequently contracted in dimensions, by the successive independence of Malabar, the rise of the state of Chera to the west, of Ramnad to the south, and of Chola in the east, till it sank in modern times into the petty government of the Naicks of Madura.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Pandya, as a kingdom was not unknown in classical times, and its ruler was the [Greek:  Basileus Pandion] mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and the king Pandion, who sent an embassy to Augustus.—­PLINY, vi. 26; PTOLEMY, vii. 1.]

[Footnote 2:  See an Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya, by Prof.  H. H. WILSON, Asiat.  Journ., vol. iii.]

[Footnote 3:  See ante, p. 353, n.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 515.]

The relation between this portion of the Dekkan and the early colonisers of Ceylon was rendered intimate by many concurring incidents.  Wijayo himself was connected by maternal descent with the king of Kalinga[1], now known as the Northern Circars; his second wife was the daughter of the king of Pandya, and the ladies who accompanied her to Ceylon were given in marriage to his ministers and officers.[2] Similar alliances were afterwards frequent; and the Singhalese annalists allude on more than one occasion to the “damilo consorts” of their sovereigns.[3] Intimate intercourse and consanguinity, were thus established from the remotest period.  Adventurers from the opposite coast were encouraged by the previous settlers; high employments were thrown open to them, Malabars were subsidised both as cavalry and as seamen; and the first abuse of their privileges was in the instance of the brothers Sena and Goottika, who, holding naval and military commands, took advantage of their position and seized on the throne, B.C. 237; apparently with such acquiescence on the part of the people, that even the Mahawanso praises the righteousness of their reign, which was prolonged to twenty-two years, when they were put to death by the rightful heir to the throne.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. vi. p. 43.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 53; the Rajarali (p. 173) says they were 700 in number.]

[Footnote 3:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 253.]

[Footnote 4:  Mahawanso ch. xxi. p. 127.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 515.]