Tamil States in 218 B.C.

Tamil States — 218 BC · The Three Crowned Kings.

The Tamil States — the realms of the deep south of India, the land the Tamils call Tamilakam, lying wholly beyond the frontier of the great Maurya empire. This is no single kingdom but a constellation of kindred crowns and warrior-chiefs who share one tongue and one heroic culture: the “three crowned kings,” the muventar. In the west, along the Malabar shore, reigns the house of Chera, lords of the pepper country whose harbours sell spice to ships from the far west. In the rich delta of the Kaveri and along the eastern Coromandel coast rules the house of Chola. And at the southern tip, about its capital Modura and the pearl-banks of the Gulf of Mannar, sits the house of Pandya. Between and beneath the three crowns a host of lesser chieftains hold their hill-forts and river-mouths, and bards move from court to court singing the praises of generous kings. Across the shallow strait lies the great island of Taprobane, productive of gold and pearls and war-elephants beyond even the mainland. North beyond the chiefdoms the power of the Satavahana rises on the Deccan, but here in the far south the law is the law of the Tamil kings.

The southern tip of the great peninsula belongs to no emperor. When the Maurya kings graved their edicts on rock and pillar, they reckoned the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Cheras — the Keralaputras — and the Satiyaputras among the free peoples beyond their border, neighbours to be addressed but never ruled. So in 218 BC Tamilakam stands as it has long stood: three royal houses and a swarm of chieftains, forever at feud and forever allied, each king a hero who must win and keep his name in war and gift-giving. The Chera holds the western coast and its pepper; the Chola the Kaveri delta and the eastern Coromandel shore; the Pandya the southern cape, with Madurai and the pearl-fishery of the Gulf of Mannar. Their bards carry their fame from hall to hall, their ships carry pepper, pearls, gems and fine cotton out to far seas, and across the strait the island of Taprobane glitters with its own kings and its own pearl-banks. It is a world of warrior-kings, not of a single throne.