The stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were well-known to the Tamil poets and episodes from them are frequently mentioned. The claim of each of the three Tamil kings to feed the opposing forces on the eve of the Great Battle has been noted already. The destruction of the three metallic forts of the Asuras (Tripura) by Shiva, King Sibi giving away the ﬂesh of his body to save a dove that was pursued by a vulture, and the struggle between Krishna and the Asuras for the possession of the Sun are among other legends alluded to by the authors. The presence of a great ﬁre underneath the ocean, Uttara-Kuru (the Northern country) as a land of perpetual enjoyment, Arundhati as the ideal of chastity, the conception of the threefold debt- Rinatraya with which every man is born, the beliefs that the cakora bird feeds only on raindrops and that raindrops turn into pearls in particular circumstances, are instances of other Sanskritic ideas taken over bodily into the literature of the Sangam period. The Tolkappiyam is said to have been modelled on the Sanskrit grammar of the Aindra School.