The Colas c11.72

c11.72

The life of Kōccengaṇān, like that of Karikāla, came to gather a haze of legend round itself; and it is necessary to avoid mixing up facts drawn from contemporary sources with the beliefs of later times. A song in the *Puṟanānūṟu*⁹⁶ and the forty verses that constitute the poem *Kaḷavaḻi* by Poygaiyār form the earliest evidence on this king's life. The references to him in the hymns of Tiruñānasambandar and Tirumangai Āḻvār as well as Sundaramūrti take us to the next stage in which the emphasis falls on the religious side of the king's life. He figures also in the legendary genealogy of the Cōḷa copper-plates of the tenth and eleventh centuries though his place in the list is not the same in all.⁹⁷ It is worth noting that the story which, after the manner of the Jātaka tales of Buddhism, makes a spider of this king in his previous birth is first noticed by Appar and repeated by the Tiruvālangāḍu plates⁹⁸ of the reign of Rājēndra Cōḷa. The *Kalingattupparaṇi* and the *Vikramaśōḻan-ulā* more or less agree with the copper-plates, but the main stream of legend flows through the *Andādi* of Nambi-Āṇḍār-Nambi to the *Periya Purāṇam* of Sēkkiḻār, the ocean in which all the streams of Śaivite legend mingle in the Tamil country.