Calcutta University Readership Lectures. Some Contributions of South India to Indian Culture

One influencing consideration thitt led to the preference of this date by my friend is the general position that he has taken in regard to the borrowing of the week days by the Hindus from the Roman week after Constantine had changed the Sabbath from the seventh day of the Jews to the first day of the week. [...] If we assign then the first hour of the first day to the Moon we find that the 61st hour which commen- ces the second clay belongs to the fifth planet or Mars ; the 121st hour to the second or Mer- cury, 181st to the sixth or Jupiter, the 241st to the third or Venus, 301st to the seventh or Saturn, 361st to the fourth or the Sun. [...] But some of the more salient arguments that lead to the conclusion that the age of the gangam is the first and the second century of the Christian era may be indicated :- (1) The whole body of the gangam works taken collectively give us a picture of the Tamil country in a period of great prosperity. [...] Tile name Tondiayar is given to the people inhabiting the country round Kanchi ; and the hill of Tirupati, the northern limit of the Tamil country% is said to have been in the country of Tondiayar or the Pallavas, thus establishing' the equation that the people called Toncliayar in Tamil are the Pallavas of Sanskrit. ' The inference is clear that the age of the gangam activity must be regarded pre [...] In this connection there is the same reference to the hill worn by the war chariots of the 3fauryas. ' The second author merely refers to the Mauryas and the cutting down of the hill to make a roadway for the war chariots of the Mauryas.