ers 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 Parakrama Bahu I., the most martial
of Singhalese kings (A.D. 1153-1186), we find _another Kulasaikera_ (=
_Kalesa_ of Wassaf), King of Madura, with _another Vira Pandi_ for son,
and _another Sundara Pandi_ Raja, 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 _Turnour's Ceylonese Epitome_, pp. 41-43; and _J.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 Dr. Caldwell,) "succeeded by Mahomedans, by
a new line of Pandyas, by the Nayak 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 _Kun_ or _Kubja_,
'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 a