The period covered by the extant literature of the Sangam is unfortunately not easy to determine with any measure of certainty.

It is from these colophons and rarely from the texts of the poems themselves, that the names of many kings and chieftains and the poets patronised by them are gathered.

The task of reducing these names to an ordered scheme in which the different generations of contemporaries can be marked off one another has not been easy.

Perunarkilli must have been a powerful monarch, as he is the only one among the early Tamil kings of the Sangam age to have performed the rajasuya (royal consecration) sacrifice.

It is likely that the Chera king Mari Venko and the Pandya Ugrapperuvaluthi attended this occasion (Purananuru – 367).