[440] Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 341.
[441] Adam Smith says that numerals are among the most abstract ideas which the human mind is capable of forming. See a paper read before the Ethnological Society in Feb. 1862, On the numerals as evidence of the progress of civilization, by Mr. Crawford.
[442] Caldwell, p. 2.
[443] Kolki of the Periplus; perhaps Kilkhar, on the Coromandel coast, opposite Rameswaram.
[444] In Sanscrit.
[445] In 1802 a pot of Roman coins was dug up near Dharaparum, in Coimbatore, of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, with Cæsarea marked on them, the place where they were struck. Buchanan's Travels, ii. p. 318.
One coin, a Roman aureus, has been found in a cairn on the Neilgherry hills.—Captain H. Congreve's Antiquities of the Neilgherry Hills.
[446] The author of the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea mentions Nelcynda (Neliceram), Paralia (Malabar), and Comari (Cape Comorin), as under King Pandion (Regio Pandionis); and Dr. Vincent thinks that the Pandyan Kings of Madura lost Malabar between the time of the author of the Periplus and that of Ptolemy; because the latter does not allude to Pandion until Cape Comorin is passed. Chira is the modern Coimbatore, and the capital of the Chira state was at Caroor. The state of Chola is the modern Tanjore. The word Pandya is probably of Sanscrit origin, but the masculine termination of on is Tamil.
[447] "In Tamil few Brahmins have written anything worthy of preservation: but the language has been cultivated and developed with immense zeal and success by native Sudras."—Caldwell, p. 33. Tamil literature, now extant, dates from the eighth or ninth century: p. 68.
[448] Dr. Ainslie, in his Materia Medica, gives a list of twenty works by Aghastya, chiefly on medical subjects, some of them translated from Sanscrit.