Ponniyin Selvan 3

 Seventy-four floodgates on the lake distributed the bounty via aqueducts to distant tracts of country side. With these irrigation waters from the lake, activities such as plowing, sowing, and Seed transplanting was being carried out as far as the eye could see. Here and there, the song of farmers who were plowing and women who were transplanting created pleasant and joyful music. Listening to all this, Vandiya Devan was riding quite
                      slowly, without prodding his tired horse. As soon as he had climbed the embankment, he had started counting the floodgates with the intention of finding out if popular claims, which declare the lake to have seventy-four floodgates were true! After having come about one and a half leagues along the bank, he had counted seventy gates. Aha! How huge is this lake? How wide and how long? Can we not say that the tanks built by the The great Pallava monarchs in the Thondai Kingdom are mere ponds and pools compared with this.