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The Colas c10: Chapter II. Early Notices

The Cōḷas c10

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Chapter II. Early Notices

c10.2

According to tradition, the Cōḷa country comprised the land between two streams having the same name, Veḷḷāṟu,¹ in the north and the south, the sea on the, east and Kōṭṭaikarai in the west. This area includes the modern districts of Trichinopoly and Tanjore and part of the former Pudukkottah state. The Kāvēri and its branches including the Coleroon (Koḷḷiḍam) dominate the landscape of this generally flat country which slopes gently towards the sea. The low tableland of Vallam broken by small ridges of grit and sandstone to the south and south-west of Tanjore, and a number of protruding masses of crystalline rock, of which the Trichinopoly rock in the centre of the fort is the best known, are the only relief to the monotony of the level surface. To find any hills of importance, we must turn to the northern taluks of the Trichinopoly district lying on the border, if not altogether outside, of the Cōḷa country proper. The delta of the Kāvēri is a large alluvial plain 'devoid of all natural eminences, save the ridges and hillocks of blown sand, which fringe the narrow strip of beach along the sea-coast. "The sea rolls upon a shelving sandy shore unbroken by rocks of any kind"; hence the coast is remarkably monotonous in aspect. The whole surface of the delta is one even level of paddy fields interspersed only with tops or clumps of cocoanut, mango and other fruit trees. There are no forests or tall tree jungles.'² The soil is very favourable also to the bamboo and the plantain.

c10.3

The glory of the Kāvēri forms an inexhaustible theme of early Tamil poetry. This noble stream was released from his water-pot by the sage Agastya in response to the prayer of the king Kānta and for the exaltation of the 'children of the sun.'³ She was the special banner of the just race of the Cōḷas, and she never failed them in the most protracted drought. The yearly freshes in the Kāvēri formed the occasion of a carnival in which the whole nation from the king down to the meanest peasant took part.

c10.4

Kāvērippaṭṭinam on the coast, about eight miles to the north of Tranquebar, serves to identify the Kāvērī proper from amidst its more considerable offshoots that find their way to the sea, and the little village apparently marks the site of the Cōḻa emporium of ancient renown.⁴ Negapatam, about ten miles south of Kāraikkāl, also on the sea board, was perhaps known to Ptolemy as an important town; at any rate it became a seat of trade and the centre of many religious faiths including Buddhism, long before it attracted the attention of European merchants and missionaries. Tanjore, Trichinopoly, the modern representative of the more ancient Uṟaiyūr which is now a suburb of Trichinopoly, and Kumbakonam are the other notable cities of the Cōḻa country. Gaṅgaikoṇḍa-cōḻapuram, at the meeting point of the modern districts of Trichinopoly, S. Arcot and Tanjore, rose into prominence as the Cōḻa capital in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and is now a small place with a magnificent temple in ruins.

c10.5

Of the origin of the name Cōḻa we have no knowledge whatever. The learned Parimēlaḻagar is inclined to make it the name, like Pāṇḍya and Cēra, of a ruling family or clan of immemorial antiquity⁵ and renown. The story of the eponymous brothers Cēran, Śōḻan and Pāṇḍiyan is doubtless an instance of euhemerism.⁶ Whatever its origin,⁷ the name Cōḻa was from the earliest times used to describe the people and the country subject to the sway of the Cōḻa dynasty of rulers. Col. Gerini's attempt to connect the word with the Sanskrit *Kāla* (black), and with *Kōla* which ‘in the early days designated the dark-coloured pre-Aryan population of southern India in general,’ is hardly more convincing than the efforts to derive it from Tamil ‘*Cōḷam*’ (millet) or Sanskrit ‘*Cōra*’ (thief).⁸

c10.6

Other names in common use for the Cōḻas are *Kiḷḷi*, *Vaḷavan* and *Śembiyan*. *Kiḷḷi* perhaps comes from ‘kiḷ’, meaning ‘dig’ or ‘cleave’ and conveys the idea of a ‘digger’;⁹ this word often forms an integral part of early Cōḻa names like Neḍuṅgiḷḷi, Nalaṅgiḷḷi and so on, but almost drops out of use in later times. ‘*Vaḷavan*’ is most probably connected with ‘*vaḷam*’, ‘fertility’, and means owner or ruler of a fertile country, such as the land of the Kāvērī was. *Śembiyan* is generally taken to mean a descendant of Śibi,¹⁰ a legendary hero whose self-sacrifice in saving a dove from the pursuit of a falcon figures among the early Cōḷa legends and forms the subject-matter of the Śibijātaka among the Jātaka stories of Buddhism.¹¹

c10.7

The Cōḷas adopted the tiger as their crest; the same animal was figured on their banner. Not one of the numberless references to this Cōḷa emblem which occur in Tamil literature tells us anything of its origin. Some late local chieftains of the Telugu country who claimed descent from Karikāla adopted the lion-crest.¹² And the Sindas of the Nāga family, who used the Vyāghralāñchana, had the story that Sinda, their eponymous ancestor, born of the serpent king Dharaṇēndra at Ahicchatra in the region of the Sindhu, was reared by a tiger. A slightly different form of the story makes him the offspring of a union between God Śiva and the Sindhu, brought up on tiger's milk by the king of serpents.¹³ These late inventions only confirm the fact that the origin of the tiger-crest was forgotten quite early by those who had adopted it.

c10.8

The grammarian Kātyāyana knew of the Cōḍas.¹⁴ The earliest records which mention the Cōḷas and which can be dated with certainty are the Aśōkan inscriptions,¹⁵ where they are mentioned among kingdoms which, though not subject to Aśōka, were on friendly terms with him. The Cōḷas, like the Pāṇḍyas, are spoken of in the plural in all the versions of the Aśōkan edicts, and this has been held to imply that 'in Aśōka's time there were more than one Cōḍa and one Pāṇḍya king.'¹⁶

c10.9

Two or three poets of the Śaṅgam make rather enigmatic references to an invasion of the South by the Mōriyar (Mauryas) and one of them, Māmūlanār, also speaks of the wealth of the Nandas hidden under the Ganges at Pāṭaliputra. All the three poets agree that, in the course of the invasion, the Mauryas cut for their chariots a new path across some rocky mountain. Māmūlanār alone furnishes some more details. He says that the Vaḍugar formed the vanguard of the invading Mauryas (*Aham* 281); elsewhere he adds that the Kōśar undertook the subjugation of the South and that, as the Mōhūr chieftain continued defiant, the Mauryas came down with their great forces on a warlike expedition to the South (*Aham* 251). Now, as Aśoka distinctly states that the Tamil kingdoms were not politically subject to him, and as there is little possibility of any Mauryan invasion of the extreme South having taken place after his time, we have necessarily to ascribe the events mentioned by Māmūlanār to a period anterior to Aśoka's accession. In other words, this poet must be taken to provide a much earlier and doubtless more dependable, if somewhat meagre, confirmation of the stories of Bindusāra's conquests in the Deccan and Southern India recorded by the Tibetan historian Tāranāth.¹⁷ The Kōśar, who occupied the Tulu country, perhaps agreed to serve as wardens of the marches for the Mauryan Empire in the South; when they found the chieftain of Mōhūr troublesome and themselves unequal to subjugating him, they were assisted in their task by the advent of Mauryan troops with a Vaḍuga vanguard. Mōhūr is probably represented to-day by its modern namesake in the South Arcot district, not far from the famous Āttūr pass through which, in recent times, Haidar Ali came down so often on the southern plains.¹⁸

c10.10

If this view of the relation of the Mauryas to the South Indian states is accepted as correct, it would follow that there was a slight set-back to the Mauryan power in the south sometime late in Bindusāra's reign or early in Aśoka's, as these states, especially Satiyaputa, seem to have improved their political status in regard to the Mauryan Empire before the date of the Rock Edicts II and XIII.

c10.11

The part taken from the sixth century B.C. by southern India in the growing commerce between the Western countries and those in the East as far as China is sufficiently known.¹⁹ Of the direction and nature of this trade and of its economic importance, something will be said further on. Here we may note that to this commerce we owe, in the main, two valuable notices of Southern India and the Cōḷa country separated by about half a century. The *Periplus Maris Erythraei* is the interesting handbook of an Alexandrian merchant, 'which was written in the time of Domitian A.D. 81-96, and by the evidence furnished by Pliny the Elder.'²⁰ The anonymous author of this short treatise tells us a little about the Cōḷa country in particular which, considering the paucity of early notices of the Coromandel coast, is of uncommon interest to the student of Cōḷa history. He says: ‘Beyond Colchi there follows another district called the coast country, which lies on a bay, and has a region inland called Argaru.’ This statement is best understood as pointing to the division of the Cōḷa country into two parts, a coastal district and an inland district. There is, as we shall see, evidence of Cōḷa rule from two centres at this period—Puhār or Kāvērippaṭṭinam on the coast and Uṟaiyūr inland. *Paṭṭinam*, meaning a port-town, was the name of the Cōḷa capital on the coast, and the phrase in the *Periplus*, ‘the coast country, which lies on a bay’, unmistakably recalls the *Paṭṭinam* of the *Paṭṭinappālai*,²¹ specially as it is placed in contrast with ‘a region inland called Argaru,’ which doubtless is the same as Uṟaiyūr. The author has named each of the districts after its chief town. It is remarkable that, while he knows the name ‘Cerobothra’ and ‘Pandian,’ he does not mention ‘Cōḷa.’ His information on the east coast of India is meagre and apparently based on hearsay.²² He mentions also three market towns and harbours ‘where the ships put in from Damirica and from the north’, which ‘in order as they lie’ are ‘first Camara, then Poduca, then Sopatma’—names now not easily identified,²³ though Sopatma may be the same as Śō-paṭṭinam of Tamil literature, now called Markāṇam.

c10.12

Writing about half a century later, the geographer Ptolemy has rather more to tell us about the Cōḷa country and its ports and inland cities.²⁴ Leaving aside all doubtful names which cannot be properly identified, we find that he gives particulars sufficiently precise of the positions of Kāvērippaṭṭinam (Khaberis) at the mouth of the Kāvēri and of Negapatam (Nikama); and as Cunningham has said: ‘Cōḷa is noticed by Ptolemy, whose *Orthura regia Sornati* must be Uṟaiyūr, the capital of Soranatha, or the king of the Soringae, that is the Soras, Choras or Cholas.²⁵ Ptolemy also makes mention of the ‘Sorai nomads’ with ‘Sora the capital of Arkatos.’ ‘One is strongly tempted to suppose that here,’ as Caldwell remarks, ‘the names given by the natives of the country to his informants had got transposed,’ and that, consequently, we have to consider Arkatos as the capital of the Sorai nomads. Arcot is not so modern a name as it is often imagined to be.²⁶ A Cōḷa princeling by name Aḻiśi is said to have had for his residence 'Ārkkāḍu surrounded by paddy fields'²⁷ and very likely Ārkkāḍ means 'forest of Ār' (*Bauhinea Racemosa*) *ār* or *ātti* being a Cōḷa emblem. This Ārkkāḍu may or may not be identical with the Arcot celebrated in later days as the seat of the Nawabs of the Carnatic; but it is probably the same as Ptolemy's Arkatos.²⁸ From the statement of Ptolemy on the 'Sorai nomads' and 'Arkatos,' the inference has been made²⁹ that there were two different Cōḷa countries or kingdoms at the same time; it is quite possible, however, that the 'Sorai nomads' were some nomadic tribe or tribes in the Cōḷa country itself. That such tribes were in existence, and that some of the early Cōḷa kings, especially Karikāla, made an effort to civilise them and train them to more settled ways of life, is borne out by Tamil literature.

c10.13

The early chapters of the *Mahāvaṁsa* contain testimony, sufficiently authentic and precise, to the early intercourse between the Cōḷa country and the island of Ceylon; and generally, the early literature of Pali Buddhism makes very valuable, though scanty, allusions to the land of the Cōḷas and Kāvērippaṭṭinam, its most celebrated emporium. Some of these references must be as old as the *Periplus*, if not earlier. *The Questions of King Milinda*, a Buddhist work of the beginning of the Christian era, mentions Kolapattana among the best-known sea-port towns of the time, and Kolapattana must be, says Rhys Davids, some place on the Coromandel coast.³⁰ Most probably this is a reference to Kāvērippaṭṭinam, the Pattana *par excellence* on the Coromandel coast, which figures elsewhere in Pali Buddhist literature as well. M. Sylvain Lévi has pointed out that Puhār, the great centre of traffic between Southern India and the islands of the Archipelago, was the original abode of the somewhat obscure sea-goddess Maṇimekhalā—'girdle of gems'—after whom Mādhavi's celebrated daughter and the poem of Śāttan narrating the story of her spiritual life came to be called.³¹ In the *Jātaka* story, Akitti, in order to escape the attentions of his admirers, left the neighbourhood of Benares for the Tamil country where he spent some time in a garden near Kāvēripaṭṭana.

c10.14

According to the *Mahāvaṁsa*, the island of Ceylon began to fall under powerful Cōḷa influences very early in its history. The relations between the Damiḷas and the natives of the island form one of the main strands in the narrative of this valuable chronicle, and the synchronisms furnished by it are among the more important sources of our knowledge of Tamil history and chronology. Though on several occasions the chronicle speaks only of Damiḷas in general, still the distinction between the Pāṇḍya and Cōḷa divisions of the Tamil country is well known and clearly observed in the *Mahāvaṁsa*. Towards the middle of the second century B.C., a Damiḷa of noble descent, Eḷāra by name, came to Ceylon from the Cōḷa country (Cōḷaraṭṭha), overpowered Asela who was then ruling in the island, and himself reigned as king for forty-four years, 'with even justice towards friend and foe on occasions of disputes at law.'³² Many stories are told in illustration of the justice of his rule, and among them is that of the king sentencing his only son to death for having unwittingly caused the death of a young calf by driving the wheel of his chariot over its neck. Though not a follower of the Buddha's creed, this king lived on friendly terms with the Buddhist *bhikkus*³³ of his realm, and his rule, so long as it lasted, was in every way acceptable to his subjects. His rule was confined to the northernmost section of the island and the Mahāgaṅga, now Mahawaeliganga, was its southern limit.³⁴ Then began a war between Eḷāra and Duṭṭhagāmaṇi, so called because he was wroth with his father who stood in the way of his fighting the Damiḷas; the object of Duṭṭhagāmaṇi in undertaking this war was twofold: to restore the political unity of Ceylon and to bring glory to the doctrine of the Buddha by driving out the Damiḷas addicted to false beliefs. The details of the campaign that followed are very clearly recorded in the *Mahāvaṁsa*;³⁵ success attended the arms of Duṭṭhagāmaṇi, and his conquered foe was pursued up to the vicinity of Anurādhapura, and Eḷāra met his death in a heroic combat with Duṭṭhagāmaṇi beneath the walls of that city. Then Duṭṭhagāmaṇi marched into the city, 'and when he had summoned the people from a yōjana around, he celebrated the funeral rites of king Eḷāra. On the spot where his body had fallen, he burned it with the catafalque, and there did he build a monument and ordain worship.' And even in the days of Mahānāman, the author of this part of the *Mahāvaṁsa*, in the sixth century A.D., the princes of Lanka, when they drew near to that place, were wont to silence their music, because of this worship. Of these transactions that loom so large in the early history of Ceylon, there is no trace in Tamil literature ³⁶ apart from the legend of the prince and the calf which is placed in the reign of Manu. We therefore lack all means of judging the extent to which the fortunes of the Cōḷa monarchs of the mainland were involved in the establishment and the overthrow of Eḷāra's power in Ceylon.

c10.15

1. kaḍal kiḻakkut-teṟkuk-karai puraḷ Veḷḷāṟu
kuḍa-tiśaiyil kōṭṭiakkaraiyum-vaḍa tiśaiyil
ēṉāṭṭu Veḷḷāṟirupattu nāṟkādam
Śōṉāṭṭuk-kellaiyenac-col.

c10.16

Though ascribed by some to Kamban (see e.g. p. 56 of the *Śōḻamaṇḍala śatakam*) the veṇbā seems to be more ancient in origin; others ascribe it to Auvaiyār (Taylor III 42). Kōṭṭaik-karai 'means "fortbank" and tradition says that it refers to the great embankment of which traces still stand in the Kuliṭtalai taluk of Trichinopoly'—*Gazetteer of the Tanjore Dt.* I p. 15.

c10.17

2. *Tanjore Manual*, pp. 4-5; *Trichinopoly Manual*, pp. 2-3.
3. *Maṇimēkalai* I, 9-12; 23-4.

c10.18

4. 'According to some it is the Chabaris Emporium mentioned by Ptolemy in the 1st cent. A.D. The inscriptions secured from the modern Kāvērippaṭṭaṇam and its vicinity leave no doubt as to its identity with Kāvirippūmpaṭṭinam *alias* Puhār, though the monuments of Pallavanīccaram and Śāyāvaneśvara are not of such early date as could be expected'—*ARE.* 1919 II 2.

c10.19

5. See *Kuraḷ* No. 955 and his gloss on it.
6. Caldwell, *Tinnevelly*, p. 12.

c10.20

7. L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar, to whom I referred the question, wrote to me as follows: 'Tam. *Cōḷa* does not appear to be directly connected with any extant Tamil or Dravidian base. This fact of course need not necessarily lead us to postulate a foreign origin for the word. * * * * * If the postulate that—*ū*—may have in some circumstances (for which we have parallels in Dravidian) changed to—ō— is justified, then one might conceivably connect *Cōla* with *Cūḷ*— with the meanings "to whirl," "to hover", and explain "*Cōḷa*" as "hoverer."'

c10.21

8. See *Gerīni-Researches*, pp. 85 ff and 101-3. There appears to be some other evidence, however, in support of Gerini's view that a stream of dark emigrants of the negrito race, the descendants of the so-called Rākṣasas of old, came to Malaya from Southern India and were followed by their early successors, the Dravidians, who constituted the pre-Aryan population of India. cf. Elliot Smith, *Human History* pp. 69-71. But Gerini exaggerates the cultural importance of these prehistoric movements of population. He confounds them with later ones that took place in historical times after Southern India was more or less

c10.22

aryanized in its culture, and he goes on to suggest that the Indian culture of Siam, Kambhoja and other places had its origin in the earliest pre-historic movements (p. 101). For Cōḷa' < cōra, thief, see Bhandarkar, *Carmichael Lectures*, 1918, pp. 8-9.

c10.23

9. Dr. Pope suggested the fanciful equation Kiḷḷi = Paḷḷavan (*IA*. xxix p. 250). Even if Paḷḷava is accepted as the correct form of the word, rather than Pallava (Skt. 'sprout'), it would mean more properly 'people dwelling in low lands' (paḷḷam), and not 'diggers.' It may be doubted if the Pallavas were indigenous to Southern India; and unless they were, it would be vain to look for a Dravidian origin for their name. In any case, they were by no means the same as the Cōḷas.

c10.24

10. See e.g. the *Vīraśōḷiyam*, comment on Tattita, v. 3.

c10.25

11. Yazdani—*Ajanta* I pp. 4-7. Krom—*Boro Budur* vol. i, pp. 275-7.

c10.26

12. *EI*. xi, p. 338.

c10.27

13. *EI*. iii 231-2.

c10.28

14. *Mahābhāṣya*, ed. Kielhorn, II p. 270.

c10.29

15. Vide Hultzsch—*Asoka Inscriptions*—Index s. v. Cōḷa.

c10.30

16. D. R. Bhandarkar—*Asoka* p. 38.

c10.31

17. Smith, *EHI*⁴ p. 147. See M. S. Ramaswami Aiyangar, *Studies in South Indian Jainism*, pp. 127 ff, for a succinct summary of the evidence on the subject; also Dr. S. K. Aiyangar, *Beginnings*, pp. 88 ff. Following Pandit M. Raghava Aiyangar, M. S. R. lays (p. 134 ff. *op. cit.*) undue stress on *vamba* in the phrase *vamba mōriyar* (*Aham* 251), quotes late and obscure Gupta legends of the tenth century A.D. in support of his notion that the Imperial Guptas were confounded by Māmūlanār with the more ancient Mauryas, and seeks to establish a fifth century date for Māmūlanār and his contemporaries of the Śaṅgam. The fact that Pandit Raghava Aiyangar does not now see much force in these arguments as he once did, and has suppressed them in the second edition of his *Śēran Śeṅguṭṭuvan*, perhaps renders otiose any detailed discussion of these views. The phrase '*vamba mōriyar*' is used by Māmūlanār only once; he himself, elsewhere, talks only of the '*mōriyar*' and so do the two other poets, Paraṅkoṟṟanār (*Aham* 69) and Ātiraiyanār (*Puṟam* 175). The expression cannot therefore be made much of, especially because '*vamba*' is an adjective with several meanings of which 'unsteady', 'restless,' is admittedly one. And supposing for a moment that Māmūlanār was thinking of the Imperial Mauryas, he knows of the Nandas and their wealth, nothing could have struck him more than the 'restlessness' of these Mauryas, eager to annex all the kingdoms of India to their empire. Even accepting the other meaning suggested for the word '*vamba*,' 'new,' we are not aware of any insuperable difficulty in supposing that, at the time when Māmūlanār was writing the Mauryan expansion to the South was a fact of recent history. One fails to see moreover how some confusion between the Mauryas and the Guptas that marks the legendary genealogy of an obscure clan of rulers in North India can furnish an analogue for a similar confusion in the mind of a South Indian Tamil poet of unknown age; much less, how such inferential confusion can be made the basis for suggesting a date for the poet and his compositions. M. S. R. was strongly influenced by Smith's view of Samudragupta the Indian Napoleon's campaign in the South based on his early identification of 'Palakka' of the Allahabad pillar inscription with Palghat, which is no longer considered sound. Mr. P. T. Srinivasa Aiyangar says of *Aham* 281: 'The Kōśar are called here Vaḍugar.' It may be so; in which case *Vaḍugar munnuṟa* of this verse should be a brief allusion to the failure of the Kōśar to subdue Mōhūr, narrated at greater length in *Aham* 251. But Mr. Aiyangar's assertion that the Konkan Mauryas 'were the only possible Mōriyar who, in conjunction with the Kōśar, could have attempted a raid into the Tamil country' is hardly convincing. See his *Tamils* pp. 522-3.

c10.32

18. *Studies in South Indian Jainism* p. 140. Many other places also bear the name Mōhūr and the identification of the place must be considered tentative.

c10.33

19. See Kennedy *JRAS.* 1898 pp. 248-87 for a full discussion of this subject. Prof. Jules Bloch in his paper "Nom du Riz" (*Etudes Asiatiques* Vol. I, pp. 37-47) denies that the Greek term for rice is derived from Tam. *Ariśi*; and he holds that there is not much evidence, philological or other, in proof of the part of South India in this trade, which might after all have been confined, at any rate until a very late stage, to Northern India and to the land routes. L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar *IA.* Vol. lix pp. 178 ff., after a careful examination of Bloch's position on the etymology of the Gk. *Oruzon*, comes to the conclusion: '*Varigi* or *Varizi* may be postulated for Dravidian from which, with characteristic modifications, the Greeks could have borrowed that word'. Kennedy's conclusion that maritime trade between South India and the West dates from the sixth or even the seventh century B.C. still seems good.

c10.34

20. Rostovtzeff—*Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire* p. 91.

c10.35

21. The quotations are from Schoff: *Periplus*. Schoff says: 'Coast country is from the native name, Cōḷa coast Cōḷamaṇḍalam.' (p. 241). This is hardly satisfactory as Cōḷa-maṇḍalam only means Cōḷa country, not 'coast.'

c10.36

22. See Rawlinson—*Intercourse between India and the Western World* pp. 121-2.

c10.37

23. Schoff—p. 242. Kanakasabhai p. 29. Also *IA.* viii, p. 149 n. *QJMS.* xxi. pp. 413-4.

c10.38

24. See Ch. I, sections 12, 13, 68, and 91 in Mc. Crindle's edn. of Bk. VII in *IA.* xiii. Also Caldwell—*Comp. Grammar*. pp. 92 ff. Kanakasabhai (p. 29) makes many shrewd suggestions on the identification of Ptolemy's names.

c10.39

25. *Ancient Geography* p. 631. See also Caldwell—*Comp. Grammar* p. 93.

c10.40

26. Caldwell says: 'General Cunningham objects to this identification that Arcot is quite a modern name; but it must, as Col. Yule has pointed out, be at least as old as A.D. 1340, for it is mentioned by Ibn Batuta. The name is properly *ār—kāḍ*, Tam. the six forests, and the Hindus of the place regard it as an ancient city, though not mentioned by the name in the Purāṇas, and point out the 'six forests' in which six of the ṛiṣis of the ancient period had their hermitage.’ (*op. cit.* pp. 93-4) Such local legends are not of much value in the face of the much stronger and earlier evidence cited. Ptolemy places Arkatos in the country between Mt. Bettigo and Adeisathros (VII, 1. 68); but on account of the inextricable confusion into which he falls over the second of these names (*IA.* xiii. p. 337), this does not help us much in the location of Arkatos on a modern map. The references in the early Tamil literature are valuable in this respect. Cunningham was doubtless influenced by Yuan-chwang's data about Chu-lien when he proposed to identify Ptolemy’s Sora, the capital of Arkatos, with Zora or Jora (the Jorampun of the maps), an old town lying immediately under the walls of Karnūl (*Anc. Geogr.* p. 626).

c10.41

27. Poem No. 190 (anonymous) of the *Narrinai* has the following:—

c10.42

tēngamal viritār—iyaṟēṟaḷiśi
vaṇḍumūśu neyda—nelliḍai malaru
mariyalaṅgaḻani—yārkkāḍanna.

c10.43

There is also a stray veṇbā (*Perundogai* No. 988) which mentions Aḷiśi-kāḍu, the kāḍu (forest) of Aḷiśi. This princeling had a son Śēndan, who is sometimes conneted with the Cōḷa capital Uṟaiyūr (*Kuṟundogai* No. 258). Ārkkāḍu is said to be in the Cōḷa country by the editor of the *Narṟiṇai*.

c10.44

28. See Yule and Burnell-*Hobson-Jobson* s. v. Arcot, where it is pointed out that of several places of this name in the Southern districts besides the town of Arcot near Vellore, one in Tanjore would correspond best with Harkatu of Ibn Batuta.

c10.45

29. D. R. Bhandarkar-*Asoka* p. 39.

c10.46

30. Rhys Davids—*The Questions of King Milinda (SBE.)* i, p. xliv and ii. p. 269.

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31. *IHQ.* vi 597 ff. Without stopping to argue the matter fully, M. Sylvain Lévi finds an easy explanation in ‘Tamil nationalism’ (p. 607) for the view which ascribes an early date to the poem. The relation between the *Nyāyapravēśa* of Diṅnāga and the *Maṇimēkalai* xxix is not simple, as readers of Professor Krishnaswami Aiyangar's *Maṇimēkhalai in its Historical Setting* must see. And a careful examination of the other systems of philosophy propounded in that canto shows that there are many truly ancient doctrines in it which would not be easy to explain on the basis of a late date such as the sixth century A.D. See S. S. Suryanarayana Sastri, *JIH*, viii and ix.

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I have my own doubts if Canto xxix does not bear signs of a remodelling.

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³² See Geiger's *Mahāvaṁsa* chh. xxi-xxv for the narrative. Geiger thinks that ‘Cōḷa-country’ means ‘Southern India.’ (*Trans.* p. 143 n. 4). This is unnecessary and seems to go against the precise expressions in the original, like *Cēḷa-raṭṭha* (xxi 13) and *dakkhiṇaṁ Madhuraṁ puraṁ Pāṇḍu-rājassa* (vii, 50), besides the common form Damiḷa employed of both countries. Further, the story of the justice done by the king to the cow that lost its calf narrated of Eḷāra in the *MV.* is localised at

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Tiruvārūr on the continent, and there is a stone monument in that place representing the central incident of the story. See *Epigr. Zeylanica* iii pp. 1-47 for the chronology of the MV. 'The length of Elāra's reign may be accepted as correct.' *ibid* p. 5 n. 1.

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33. *MV.* xxi, 21-6.

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34. *MV.* xxii 86 and xxiv 4.

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³⁵ Geiger-transl. pp. 290-1 gives a lucid account of the details of the war. On one occasion seven Damiḷa princes were defeated in one day (xxv 10), and altogether thirty-two princes are said to have been thus overpowered in the war (*ibid.* 75). They were probably all commanders of Elāra's forces which garrisoned many fortresses on the frontier and elsewhere.

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³⁶ See *JRAS.* 1913, pp. 529-31. Some vague popular legends connect the poet of the *Kuraḷ*, Tiruvaḷḷuvar, with a merchant prince, Elela Singa, (V.R.R. Dikshitar-*Studies in Tamil Literature and History*-pp. 129 ff.), but no one knows where these come from, and they lack all claim to credence and can furnish no basis for a date for Tiruvaḷḷuvar. For other instances of Tamil influence in Ceylon, not specially known to be Cōḷa, see *MV.* xxi 10, Sena and Guttaka; xxxiii 56, Puḷattha and others; xxxiv, 19 ff. for the infamous career or Anulā-dēvi who made over the country to a succession of her Tamil paramours.

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