the contemporary Pānḍyan, designated the victor at Talaiyālan gānam. With this mishap to the ruler the Chera ascendancy passes away. The Pānḍyans of Madura take their turn now, and continued to hold the position of hegemony up to the time that the Pallavas rise into importance. This, in brief and in very general terms, was the political history of south India at the beginning and during the early centuries of the Christian era.

III. Maritime Character

The geographical position of the Tamil kingdoms and their maritime borders have influenced their political, social and commercial history. K. M. PANIKKAR has examined this factor from a geopolitical angle in his study Geographical Factors in Indian History, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1955. The reading is from pages 62 to 65.

IT IS NOT the Vindhyas and the tableland alone that separate Aryavarta from the Deccan. The main differentiating characteristic is the attitude towards the sea. To the people of North India, with their Central Asian traditions, the sea meant very little. Their conception of politics is well expressed by Kalidasa, who describes the ideal kings of the Raghu Dynasty as Āsamudra Kshitiesānām-rulers whose territory extended to the shores of the sea. The idea of ruling the seas, far less of ruling lands across the seas, never entered the minds of the monarchs of the North while it was a normal conception with the kalingas, the Cholas and the Pandyas. This is not to say that the Aryans after their arrival in India did not become familiar with the sea or with maritime navigation, but to them population movements, political power, etc., were bounded by the sea. In South India on the other hand population movements and cultural developments would seem to have been determined by the sea. The prehistoric finds at Maski in Mysore and other centres establish maritime relationships with the West, the Arabian Sea coast and the Mediterranean basin, while the prevalence of Austric languages even today and the continuance of kinship systems among the Dravidian populations similar to those of Polynesians indicate population and culture movement from the Pacific. The prevalence of the forms of Austric language in the Nicobars and its spread not only to different parts of India but to Madagascar, where it was powerful enough to establish a permanent dominance, are evidences of large-scale population and culture movements from the Pacific. The Polynesian origin of the dominant racial groups in Madagascar is generally