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The Colas c12: Chapter IV. Government and Social Life in the Śaṅgam Age

The Cōḷas c12

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English

Chapter IV. Government and Social Life in the Śaṅgam Age

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In the present state of our knowledge it is not possible for us to view the political events of the Śaṅgam age as a connected whole and study them in their sequence. They pass before us in kaleidoscopic confusion, more or less the same accidental results of the ambitions and fears, the hopes and blunders of kings and chieftains that they must have appeared to their contemporaries. We totally miss the mutual connection and the perspective in which it is the task of history to set the events of the past. What we lack in this direction seems, however, to be more than made good in another. There is no age without its peculiar background of social and cultural ideas and ideals, a kind of communal psychology which possesses men's minds and to a large extent supports their institutions and determines their actions. Of this psychological background, the literature of the Śaṅgam gives us an unusually complete and true picture.

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The most striking feature of the culture of the age is its composite quality. It is the unmistakable result of the blend of two originally distinct cultures, best described as Tamilian¹ and Aryan. There is no task more fascinating, and none less easy, in the study of the pre-history of Southern India than that of disentangling the primitive elements of these disparate cultures, the stages by which they mingled and the consequences of their mixture.² Our task is the simpler one of studying the resultant culture as it is reflected in the extant literature of the Śaṅgam. In the absence of a settled internal chronology, and of reliable data bearing on the growth of the Tamil language in this period, the relative dates of individual poems can hardly be fixed with any confidence. Attempts to base inferences on a fifth century date for Karikāla, or on subjective tests like the assumption that kings began to loom large only after Karikāla's time,³ or the assumption that minor chieftains gained power after the eclipse of the three dynasties in the Kaḷabhra interregnum,⁴ cannot be received with too much suspicion. Our course must be to treat the entire corpus of the Śaṅgam works, (including also the *Śilappadikāram* and the *Maṇimēkalai* in this description but making more cautious use of them than of the other poems), as depicting the culture of a definite epoch extending over a period of three centuries; and thus to gain some knowledge of the background against which must be set the wars and disputes, the friendships and jealousies that have been sketched in the last chapter.

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To trace fully the elements of pre-Aryan Tamil culture that survived into historical times would involve an extensive application of comparative methods to the literature of the Śaṅgam age, such as cannot be undertaken here. These survivals are seen sometimes to exist by the side of the newer practices; just as the electric train and the country cart are both seen in use today, so in the *Maṇimēkalai* we see the prevalence side by side of no fewer than five modes of disposing of the dead which included cremation, exposure, and burial with and without urns.⁵ Other instances show evidence of a conscious effort to blend the new with the old, and dovetail into one another modes originally distinct and self-contained. It is well-known that the earliest Dharmasūtras⁶ mention eight forms of marriage as part of the Aryan code; these eight forms are mentioned in the Sūtras of the *Tolkāppiyam*⁷ and the *Iṟaiyanār Kaḷaviyal*, and much ingenuity is spent in accommodating them to Tamil forms. The Tamils had a relatively simple conception of marriage; they recognised the natural coming together of man and woman (*kāmakkūṭṭam*), and the slight differences in the manifestation of love, perhaps ultimately traceable to differences in the physical conditions of the different parts of the country. These they recognised as the five *tiṇais*. They had also names for unilateral love, *kaikkiḷai*, and abnormal love—*perundiṇai*. Into this scheme the eight Aryan forms are squeezed with results not altogether happy.⁸ The five *tiṇais* are treated as varieties of Gāndharva, and the Āsura, Rākṣasa and Paiśāca forms are grouped under *kaikkiḷai*—courses not very satisfactory in themselves. But the attempt to impound the remaining Aryan forms, Brāhma, Prājāpatya, Ārṣa and Daiva under *perundiṇai* is even less happy, and shows that the synthesis was not easy or natural. But the most tangible result of the meeting of the Tamil and the Aryan is the tremendous richness and fecundity that was imparted to the Tamil idiom thereby, and the rise of a literature which combined a good deal of classic grace with vernacular energy and strength. This is the literature of the Śaṅgam Age.

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In a few broad sweeps of his pen, the poet of the *Paṭṭinappālai*⁹ conveys to us the general aspect of rural life in the ancient Cōḷa country studded with numberless small villages. The unfailing Kāvēri spread its fertilising waters on the wide fields yielding golden harvests. The white water-lilies growing in wet fields withered under wreaths of smoke issuing from hot ovens boiling the sweet juice of the dark cane. The buffalo crammed its maw with well-grown ears of corn, while its young ones slept in the shadow of the tall barns. Cocoanut palms and plantains with bunches of fruit, the areca-palm and the fragrant turmeric, the mango in its variety and the palmyra with clusters of palm-fruit, the broad based *sēmbu* (Colocasia antiquorum), and the tender ginger grew in abundance around each village. Bright-faced maidens, wearing tasteful jewels and innocent looks, keeping watch over the paddy drying in the open, flung their curved ear-ornaments of gold at the fowl that came to eat the grain. Little children, with anklets on their feet, played about on the thresholds of houses, with their toy-carts having three wheels and no horses, and shouted out to people to get out of their way. Such were the many villages in which lived the rich families of the extensive Cōḷa country. The wonderful fertility of the soil is a favourite theme with the poets, and making all allowance for the license of poets, especially of court-poets, one can hardly deny the reality of the substance behind such utterances as that of Kōvūr-Kiḻār:¹⁰

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Glory be thine, O giver, whose brow knows no sweat
From labour done, but only that from eager feasting!
[—Like drops of rain
That fall in the full lake, drips down the fat
From the meats they serve up; roasted flesh is

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Carved and eaten; from their emptied porringers they
Quaff large draughts of milk!—
Thy fields of rice,—wide are their borders, where
The sweet cane flowers! Thy pasture lands,—with stalls
For herds,—there cattle graze!
Archers with fortified camps guard the flocks, and from
\hfill [tree-tops
On the wooded shore count the ships that cover thy sea!—
In the bay they load the abounding salt with which thy
\hfill [craggy mountains teem!

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Āvūr Mūlam-kiḻār affirms¹¹ that the small space in which an elephant can lie down produced enough to feed seven; another poet¹² states that a *vēli* of land produced a round thousand *kaḷams* of paddy.

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The government of the land was in form a hereditary monarchy. Disputed successions and civil wars were, as we have seen, not uncommon; and if the accounts we possess of the ravages that followed a conquest contain any truth, war was not, as so often made out, the pleasant diversion of a few professionals which left the normal course of life in the country untouched. The Sanskritic conception of the state (*rājya*) as an organism with seven limbs (*angas*) was known and accepted, and the *Kuṟaḷ*,¹³ introducing a slight but significant change, makes the remaining six elements subject to the king. In other respects as well, the concepts of polity gain a certain clarity and precision in the hands of Tiruvaḷḷuvar, unknown to their sources. The ten verses¹⁴ in which he deals with the essentials of *nāḍu* (*rāṣṭra*) are far more clear-cut in their analysis of the physical basis of the life of the state than the corresponding statements in the Arthaśāstras known to us, and the concluding declaration:¹⁵

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'Though blest in every other way, it avails nothing
to a *nāḍu* if there be no peace between the people and
the king'

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shows a firm grasp on the part of the author of the fundamentally moral foundations of political independence. Again, the same combination of shrewd practical wisdom and high political principle characterises his discussion of the place of treasure in state life,¹⁶ and in this section we have the remarkable statement that the king’s treasury is replenished from three sources¹⁷—land-tax, customs and tolls, conquest. And in striking contrast to Kauṭilya’s maxims on *praṇaya* (‘benevolences’), is the sound rule of Tiruvaḷḷuvar:¹⁸

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‘A sceptered king imploring a gift is like a robber with lance in hand crying “give”’

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It may be noted in passing that a verse in *Ahanānūṟu*¹⁹ states that the Cōḷas had a strongly guarded treasury at Kumbakōṇam.

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The king was in all essential respects an autocrat, whose autocracy was tempered by the maxims of the wise and the occasional intercession of the minister. The sphere of the state’s activity was, however, very limited, and in a society where respect for ancestral custom was very deep-rooted, even the most perverse of autocrats could not have done much harm; and it must be owned that the general impression left on the mind by the literature of the age is one of contentment on the part of the people who were proud of their kings and loyal to them. The great author of the *Kuraḷ*, much of whose work is devoted to a systematic treatment of the affairs of state, may be accepted as a safe guide to the prevailing theory of the time; and theory is never so completely divorced from practice that we can make no inferences from the one regarding the other. No better method can be availed of to understand the nature of Tamil monarchy in this period than to discuss some of the salient statements of Tiruvaḷḷuvar on the subject. He warns kings, for instance, against the corrupting influence of unlimited power, saying:²⁰

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The king with none to censure him, bereft of safe-
[guards all
Though none his ruin work, shall surely ruined fall.

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The possibility of oppression and its consequence to the tyrant form the subject of some verses which seem to imply that even in the face of intolerable misrule there were no formal remedies open to the people:²¹

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'His people's tears of sorrow past endurance, are not they
sharp instruments, to wear the monarch's wealth away?
. . . . . . . . . .
'Ah! cruel is our king' where subjects sadly say,
His age shall dwindle, swift his joy of life decay.

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The importance attached to espionage would likewise imply that the king had little direct means of ascertaining popular opinion : ²²

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These two: the code renowned, and spies,
In these let the king confide as eyes.

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And the duty is cast on the minister of even braving the anger of a worthless king and speaking out to him when the occasion demanded it: ²³

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'Though, himself unwise, the king might cast his
wise words away, it is the duty of the minister to speak
the very truth.'

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Lastly, the important place of learned men in the polity of the land and the potency of their influence in the country and on the court is neatly brought out in the *Kural*: ²⁴

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Although you hate incur of those whose ploughs are bows,
Make not the men whose ploughs are words your foes!

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Nothing can furnish more striking evidence of the great gulf that separated royalty from common humanity than the awe with which the power of the king for good and for ill was contemplated. In theory, he was not merely, nor even primarily, the guardian of the people from physical danger, internal and external, but he was the custodian of the Universal Order. On his right rule rested the penance of the sage, the purity of the wife, ²⁵ nay the very course of the seasons. The *Kuraḷ* affirms: ²⁶

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The learning and virtue of the sages spring from the
[sceptre of the King;

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again,

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Where King, who righteous laws regards, the sceptre
[wields,
There fall the showers, there rich abundance crowns the
[fields.

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Not lance gives kings the victory,
But sceptre swayed with equity.

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The result of misrule then is not rebellion, but famine. Some of these ideas, though not in so clear-cut a form, are also the common stock of Sanskrit treatises on polity. These statements, doubtless, are by no means to be understood literally; they are only meant to emphasise the importance and the glory of a just rule: and are part of the armoury of maxims and exhortations intended for the guidance of kings and for the good of their subjects. But from this mystic conception of kingship, it is a far cry to the control of the royal power by popular representation and the power of the purse. The early Sanskritic political thinkers, like some Roman Catholic writers of the sixteenth century, justified tyrannicide under conditions. Tamil literature does not seem ever to sanction resistance to the king’s will.

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Mention is made in the *Śilappadikāram* and the *Maṇimēkalai* of groups called *aimperunguḻu* and *eṇpērāyam*. Another group of five categories of persons is sometimes added to these to make up the ‘eighteen *kiḷaippālōr*’ as the early lexicon *Divākaram* calls them, or the ‘eighteen *śuṟṟam*’ as they are more commonly known. There are noticeable divergences among the earliest authorities on the content of *aimperunguḻu* and *eṇpērāyam*: ²⁷ this, taken along with the contexts in which these phrases occur outside the lexicons, is enough to convince a student of Tamil Literature that these various groups are part of the royal paraphernalia which accompanied kings on ceremonial occasions. The *Kuṟaḷ* knows nothing of them. Kanakasabhai,²⁸ who recognised that the ‘*eṇpērāyam*’ were the eight groups of attendants who contributed to the ‘pomp and dignity’ with which the king was surrounded, somehow convinced himself that the ‘*aimperunguḻu*’ was of another order, and has made a number of statements not one of which is warranted by his sources. ‘The council of representatives safeguarded the rights and privileges of the people; the priests directed all religious ceremonies; the physicians attended to all matters affecting the health of the king and his subjects; the astrologers fixed auspicious times for public ceremonies and predicted important events; the ministers attended to the collection and expenditure of the revenue and the administration of justice.

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Separate places were assigned in the capital town, for each of these assemblies, for their meetings and transaction of business. …The power of government was entirely vested in the king and in the “Five Great Assemblies.” It is most remarkable that this system of government was followed in the three kingdoms of the Pāṇḍya, Cōḷa and Cēra, although they were independent of each other. There is reason to believe therefore that they followed this system of government which obtained in the country from which the founders of the “three kingdoms” had originally migrated, namely, the Magadha Empire.’ Of this string of astonishing assertions, we can only observe that everything in them except the names of the groups is pure imagination, and the reader will search the texts in vain for support for these statements. What is here called ‘the council of representatives’ is described by the vague term ‘*māśanam*’ which at best may mean ‘elders’.^29

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For the germ of a popular assembly, not organised on any scientific basis of representation, but still virtually representing such public opinion as there was, we must turn really to the institution called ‘*manṟam*’ (hall) and ‘*podiyil*’ (common place) in this early literature. The two sections on ‘*avai*’ (*sabhā*) in the *Kuraḷ* are quite general, and some verses in them may raise a doubt whether anything more than meetings for purposes of learned disputation is contemplated by them; but the term ‘*avai*’ is also applied in other works to the ‘*manṟam*’ and in the *Kuraḷ* itself, the *avai* is clearly part of the mechanism of politics. We may therefore hold with Parimēlaḻagar that these sections have reference to the king’s *sabhā*. Frequent as are the allusions to the ‘*sabhā*’ or ‘*manṟam*’ in the works of the period, few specific details of its nature and working are forthcoming.

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Its place in the administration of justice, especially in the capital city of the king, is well attested. The sons of Malaiyamān were tried and sentenced, and later released by the intercession of Kōvūr-Kiḻār, in the *manṟam* of Uṟaiyūr;^30 and Pottiyār, after the death of his friend Kōpperuñjōḷan, could not bear the sight of the same *manṟam* bereft of him. The *Porunar-āṟṟuppaḍai*^31 makes a pithy statement about adults setting aside their feuds while they entered the *sabhā*, which might mean either that they got their disputes adjudicated or laid their private quarrels aside for the discharge of common duties. We can infer naturally that the *sabhā* or *manṟam* was also availed of by the king for purposes of general consultation; Tiruvaḷḷuvar lays stress on the importance of ready speech in the assembly by saying that the learning of a man who is afraid to speak out in the assembly is like a bright sword in the hands of a eunuch on the field of battle.³²

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Even less specialised and more entangled in the social and religious complex of village life was the *manṟam* of the rural areas. Each village had its common place of meeting, generally under the shade of a big tree where men, women and children met for all the common activities of the village; there were held the folk dances in which the women took part and which were suspended in the midst of a war or siege.³³ Lacking evidence on the place occupied by the *maṉṟam* in the politics of rural life, we may still trace to these primitive folk-gatherings, at least in part, the beginnings of the highly developed system of village-government which came into existence and functioned so admirably in later Cōḷa times.³⁴

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The chief sources of royal revenue appear to have been land and trade. The *mā* and the *vēli* as measures of land were already known;³⁵ but we have no means of determining precisely the king's share of the produce of agriculture. The peasant was the backbone of the country's prosperity and was held in great esteem. The author of the *Kuraḷ* affirms that his was the only life worth the name, the life of all the rest being one of servitude and sycophancy.³⁶ The importance of foreign trade in the period, and the vivid account of the activity of customs officials given in the *Paṭṭinappālai*³⁷ must go a long way to convince us of the high place occupied by customs duties as a source of revenue.

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'In the broad street near the sea beach where are seen (to grow) white long-petalled clusters of *tāḻai* (Pandanus), officials of established renown guarding the property of the good king, collect customs from day to day, untiring like the horses yoked to the chariot of the hot-rayed sun; yet, without abating, in the manner of

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‘showers in the rainy (season) when the water absorbed by the clouds is poured on the hill, and the water poured on the hill is despatched to the sea, immeasurable quantities of various articles are being brought ashore from the sea and sent to the sea from land; in heavy bales, precious articles come crowding in endlessly into the strongly guarded enclosure, and are sent to the stack after being stamped with the (seal of the) mighty and fierce tiger.’

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The prison formed part of the system of administration.³⁸ The Cēra Kaṇaikkāl-Irumpoṟai was detained by Śeṅgaṇān in a prison, which, from its name Kuḍavāyiṟ-kōṭṭam, is sometimes taken to have been in Kumbakōṇam or a smaller place, also near it, now called Koḍavāśal.³⁹

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An army of well-equipped professional soldiers was regularly maintained and no doubt found frequent employment in those bellicose times. The captains of the army were distinguished by the title of *ēnādi* conferred on them in a ceremony of formal investiture at which the king presented his chosen commander with a ring and other insignia of high military rank.⁴⁰ The *Puṟanānūṟu* contains two poems⁴¹ on such military leaders who served the Cōḷa monarchs; of these, one gives a very clear notion of the ideals cherished by a good soldier in those days:

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‘You, when you see a fight, you rush to the front, divide your enemy’s forces, stand before them, and get your body scarred by the deep cuts of their swords; thus are you (your fame is) pleasant to the ear, not so your body to the eye. As for them (your enemies), when they see you, they turn their backs, and with bodies whole and unscarred, they are pleasant to the eye not so (their infamy) to the ear. Hence, you are pleasant in one way, they in another; what is there else in which they do not equal you? Yet, what wonder is it, tell us, noble one! that this world cherishes you, O! Kiḷḷi, of the fleet steed and of the victorious anklet-adorned foot.’

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Even the common soldier when he fell fighting was cherished by his compatriots. The spot was usually marked by a stone bearing on it the name and the fame of the fallen hero. Such hero stones also sometimes became objects of worship.⁴² This custom survived till at least the tenth century in the Tamil and Kannaḍa country where several inscribed hero stones bearing dates in the ninth and tenth centuries and answering to the description given of them in Śaṅgam literature have been brought to light. The setting up of memorial stones for this and other purposes was so common that, at an early date, literary convention came to standardise the procedure adopted on such occasions.⁴³

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Kings often took the field in person and delighted to rejoice with the common soldiers in their successes; on the other hand, if a king was killed or even seriously wounded in the midst of the fight, his army gave up the struggle and accepted defeat.⁴⁴ Yet only a warrior’s death was held worthy of kings; one Cēra monarch, as we have seen, having been wounded in his back, decided to starve himself to death; another, less heroic, mourned his captivity in pitiful terms. It was a common practice to lay on a bed of *kuśa* grass the corpses of kings who died otherwise than in a fight, and cleave them with a sword before burial or cremation in order to ensure for them a place in the Valhalla of the Tamils.⁴⁵ The vanity of the victor often inflicted deep personal humiliations on his vanquished foe, the memories of which rankled and brought on further strife. The crowns of defeated kings furnished the gold for the anklets of the victor.⁴⁶ The horse, the elephant and war chariot, the sword, lance and bow, and the war-drum are among the paraphernalia of war most frequently described in the literature of the age. Elephants are often said to have carried flags in the battle-field, no doubt, the distinctive standards of each side which had, besides, other less prominent emblems like flowers and garlands of a particular variety. The *Kaḷavaḻi* is one of the most detailed descriptions we possess of the battle-field in the Tamil country, and the poem supplies in a casual way much interesting information on military affairs.⁴⁷ The soldiers, infantry and cavalry alike, wore leather sandals for the protection of their feet.⁴⁸ The nobles and princes rode on elephants, and the commanders drove in pennoned chariots. Poygaiyār mentions that women who had lost their husbands bewailed their loss on the field of Kaḷumalam;⁴⁹ unless this is mere rhetoric, we may suppose that women, at least of the higher orders, sometimes accompanied their husbands to the field.

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Besides being the head of the government and leader in war, the king also held the first rank in social life. He patronised poetry and the arts, and kept an open house. War and women were, in fact, the universal preoccupations of the leisured classes, besides wine and song. The king and his *ēnādis* with their retinues must have formed a gay boisterous crew at the top of society with a huge capacity for enjoying the simple pleasures of life such as eating and drinking. No occasion was lost for hold-

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ing a feast and the poets are most eloquent in their praise of the sumptuous fare to which they were so often asked. One poet declares to his patron:⁵⁰

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‘I came to see you that we may eat together the unctuous chops of meat, cooled after boiling and soft like the carded cotton of the spinning woman, alternating with large pots of toddy.’

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Another records in grateful detail his exhilarating reception at the hands of the great Cōḷa king Karikāla:⁵¹

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‘In his palace, beautiful women decked in fine jewels and sweet smiles, often poured out and filled the ever-ready goblet of gold with intoxicating liquor, unstinting like the rain; thus drinking my fill, and chasing out my fatigue and my great distress, I experienced a new elation. \* \* \* In good time, he plied me with the soft boiled legs of sheep fed on sweet grass, and hot meat, cooked at the points of spits, in large chops which were cooled by being turned in the mouth from one side to another; when I said I would have no more of these, he kept me on, and gave me to eat sweets made in varied shapes and of excellent taste. In this wise, entertained by the music of the sweet drum and the well tuned lute of the

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bright faced *viraliyar*, I spent many pleasant days. On occasions, he entreated me to eat food prepared from rice; then I ate fine cooked rice which, with unbroken edges and erect like fingers, resembled the buds of the *mullai* (flower), together with curries sweetened with milk, in such quantity that they filled me up to the neck. So I stayed happily with him, and by eating flesh day and night, the edges of my teeth became blunt like the ploughshare (after) ploughing dry land. Getting no time to rest, I began to dislike food; and one day I said: O! prosperous (king)! expert in collecting tribute from your angry foes, let me go hence, back to my old city.'

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The habit of eating betel leaves after food was well-known. Women are said to have given up eating betel leaves and bathing in cold water when their husbands fell in battle.⁵² Kōvalan's wife Kaṇṇaki gave him, after his last meal, betel leaves and arecanuts to eat, before he went out on his fatal mission for the sale of the anklet in Madura.⁵³

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Easily the most cultured among the amusements open to the upper classes in those days were poetry, song and dance. The poets were men and women drawn from all classes; they composed verses to suit the immediate occasion and were often rewarded very well for their literary exertions. How much we owe to these occasional songs, gathered subsequently and arranged in 'the eight anthologies', must be clear from the numerous examples quoted already. The profits of poetry in this age were believed, at any rate by people of later times to be absurdly high; and the author of the *Kalingattupparaṇi* tells us that Kaḍiyalūr Rudrangaṇṇanār got for his *Paṭṭinappālai* over a million and a half gold pieces from Karikāla.⁵⁴ If legend says true, only a small part of early Tamil poetry has come down to us; but what we possess of this literature bears evidence of its great qualities. The poems, specially the shorter ones, are full of colour and true to life. They abound in fine phrases giving compact and eloquent expression to the physical and spiritual experiences of the poet.

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They are generally free from the monotony and the artificiality that mar much of later Tamil poetry. And they do not lack width of range. The short poem, the long ode, the dramatic epic and the religious lyric were all known; and in the *Kuṟaḷ* of Tiruvaḷḷuvar we have a work that transcends the limitations of time and place.

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Besides these poets, some of whom were resident companions of kings and chiefs, while others, the humbler ones, moved from one court to another in search of patronage, there were also roving bands of musicians followed by women who danced to the accompaniment of music. They were the *pāṇar* and *viraliyar* who moved about the country in companies carrying with them all sorts of quaint musical instruments. They seem to have been the representatives of primitive tribal groups⁵⁵ who preserved the folk-songs and dances of an earlier age. Their numbers and their poverty form a frequent theme of the poetry of the age, and, from all accounts, they seem to have lived from hand to mouth and seldom known where their next meal was to be had. Here is a very humorous account⁵⁶ of their experiences after meeting a generous patron:

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‘The Cōḷa king showered great quantities of wealth in (the form of) fine and costly jewels not suited to us; on seeing this, some among the large group of my kinsfolk, used (only) to abject poverty, put on their ears ornaments meant for the fingers; others wore on their fingers things meant for the ear; others put on their necks jewels meant for the waist; yet others adorned their waists with ornaments properly worn on the neck; in this wise, as on the day when the mighty *rākṣasa* carried off Sītā, the wife of Rāma of the swift chariot, the great group of red-faced monkeys shone in the fine jewels (of Sītā) that they discovered on the ground, we were the cause of endless laughter.’

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Of the class of poems called *āṟṟuppaḍai*, in which a poet narrates his experiences of a patron and invites others to bring themselves to his notice, some are addressed to the *pāṇar* and one of these poems, a relatively short piece, may be reproduced here.⁵⁷

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Minstrel, with little lute of sweetest strain !
Suppliant with words of ancient wisdom full !
Importunate thou askest me to rest and listen to the pleasant sounds of thy tambourine.
But hear what I shall say !
The modest home of Paṇṇan, whose hands are full of gifts, is near the wide city.
There food inexhaustible is found like the waters of the cool tank under January's moon, and the humming bees explore the sweets of the fragrant water-lily.
There he meditates the praise and glory of Kiḷḷi-vaḷavan, king of the good land that yields in abundance rice and sweet water, and that knows the fire that cooks, but not the fire that consumes.
If thither,—together with thy songstress, whose hair diffuses fragrance of the ' trumpet-flower,' the bright-browed, sweetly smiling—you softly advance, you shall prosper well.
His gifts are not mere chance, like gold found by the woodman in the forest.
Hesitate not.
Long may he flourish !

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That the arts of music and dancing were highly developed becomes clear from the celebrated third canto, the *Arangēṟṟukādai* of the *Śilappadikāram* which gives a full account of the technique of the theatre and the dance, and of the music and musical instruments accompanying the dance. If we may trust the earliest glossator to whom we have access on this highly abstruse section of the *Śiḷappadikāram*, the dancing and music, of which hetaerae like Mādhavi were the exponents in high society, comprised at least two strains which had come together to form a complex scheme. These were the *dēśi* and *mārga*, the former doubtless as its name implies the strain indigenous to the country, and the latter an exotic Aryan mode. We may also infer the existence of an 'extensive literature' on these arts most of which has been lost to us. Eleven scenes⁵⁸ from Aryan mythology seem to have been selected for standardised presentation and formed the classics of the arts. The *Maṇimēkalai*,⁵⁹ like Vātsyāyana's *Kāmasūtra*, indicates that the nāḍaka magaḷir, the hetaerae, underwent a regular course of instruction extending over a number of years and comprising royal dances, popular dances, singing, lute-playing, flute-playing, cookery, perfumery, painting, flowerwork and so on. Several varieties of the *vīṇai* and *yāḻ* are mentioned; it is not easy to understand their exact forms now, though it is clear that a high stage of development had then been reached in these arts, apparently after a long evolution.

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The richer classes dwelt in houses built of brick and mortar,⁶⁰ of which the walls were often covered with painting of divine figures and pictures of animal life,⁶¹ and surrounded by tastefully laid out pleasure gardens.⁶² Such gardens possessed shallow wells or tanks with mechanical fittings, artificial hillocks, rivulets and waterfalls, bowers of flower plants and glass houses, for the amusement of the inmates of the mansions that stood in their midst. Mirrors were also known and used.⁶³ The opening canto of the *Śilappadikāram* gives an account of a wedding in high society which, though no doubt slightly idealised, may perhaps be accepted as based upon reality. The bride, Kaṇṇaki, was twelve years of age; the bridegroom, Kōvalan, was sixteen. Their marriage was arranged by their parents, who were wealthy merchants, and announced to the citizens of Puhār by ladies riding on an elephant.

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'On the day when the moon was in conjunction with Rōhiṇi, in a *maṇḍapa* adorned with pearls and flowers and supported on jewelled pillars with flowerfestooned capitals, underneath an azure canopy, Kōvalan, led in the Vedic rituals by an aged Brahman (priest), went round the fire in the company of her who rivalled Arundhati—blessed are the eyes of those who saw the sight.'

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The ceremonial over, the women strewed flowers and prayed for the life-long happiness of the couple, and the prosperity of the Emperor, and then followed the consummation.⁶⁴

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Of the life of the common folk, literature furnishes fewer details. The *Paṭṭinappālai* gives a vivid account of the life⁶⁵ of the *Paradavar*, the deep-sea fishermen of Puhār, including some of their holiday amusements. On the wide dune of black sand, the large clan of rough working *Paradavar* were seen eating the cooked flesh of the sea-fish and the boiled field-turtle. Wearing flowers of the *aḍumbu* (Ipomaea bilboa) and the water-lily, they gathered in the spacious *manṟam* like the stars and planets revolving in the blue sky. The stronger ones among them entered the wide arena and, without turning back, they fought fierce duels hurting one another with their fists and their weapons. Birds flew from the mottled palms, frightened by stones shot from slings. In the outer streets, pigs were wallowing in puddles with their young ones, together with many kinds of fowl, and rams and quails were seen fighting. Their huts with low thatched roofs in which were stuck the long handles of fishing rods resembled the little enclosures round hero stones made of rows of shields and spears. In the midst of these huts, fishing nets were drying on sandy thresholds, like patches of darkness in bright moonlight. Wearing the garlands of the cool white convolvulus growing at the foot of the screw pine (with aerial roots) they planted a branching jaw-bone of the sword fish and invoked a mighty god to dwell in it. Decked in the long-petalled *tāḻai* (pandanus) flowers, the big red-haired fishermen drank the toddy of the rustling palm in the company of their dark women clad in garments of green leaves. Refraining from going afishing on the wide blue water, they ate and sported on the sandy beach reeking of the smell of fish. Like the ruddy cloud embracing the high mountain, like the baby clinging to its mother’s breast, the red waters of the Kāviri mingled with the clear sea water roaring at its mouth; there, the *Paradavar* washed their sins in the sea and the salt of the sea in the water of the river. They played with the crabs and, amidst the spreading waves of the sea, made dolls of sand and, feasting their senses in other ways, they spent the whole day in games. In the night, they heard music and witnessed the play acted in pillared mansions; lovers, changing silks for lighter robes and drinking wine without limit, slept on the sands in the last watch of night.

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Puhār or Kāvirippūmpaṭṭinam was one of the few great cities of the time, and, being on the sea coast, was also the great emporium of the kingdom. The city, its port and trade are fully described in the poems. The author of the *Śilappadikāram* says that the wise considered the prosperity of Puhār as stable as the Himalaya and the Podiya mountains;⁶⁶ again,

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‘This celebrated city, full of riches coveted by kings and teeming with sailors, is so well stocked that it will not fail in its hospitality even if the whole world encircled by the roaring sea become its guest; indeed in the hoards of (merchandise) brought in ships and carts, (the city) resembles a congregation of (all) the alien tracts producing precious goods.’

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A poet,⁶⁷ addressing the Cōḷa king, says that big ships entered the port of Puhār without slacking sail, and poured out on the beach, inhabited by the common people, precious merchandise brought from overseas. In the extensive bazaar of Puhār,⁶⁸ says the author of *Paṭṭinappālai*, were seen many tall mansions surrounded by platforms reached by high ladders. These mansions had many apartments and were provided with door-ways, great and small, and wide verandahs and corridors. Well-dressed damsels glittering in jewels were looking out from the windows of the upper floors, and their palms joined in their front in salutation to Muruga resembled bunches of *śeṅgāndaḷ* (*gloriosa superba*) flowers seen high on the slopes of mountains. When Muruga was taken out in procession in the bazaar, which was done quite often, music and dancing parties accompanied him, and the sound of the flute, lute and drum mingled with the noises in the street. In all parts of the town there were flags of various kinds and shapes⁶⁹ flying in the air; some were flags that were worshipped by many as a high divinity, and the entrances to their precincts were decorated with flowers.

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Others were white flags raised on frames supported by posts, below which were made offerings of rice and sugar to precious boxes of merchandise. Yet others were flags that announced the challenge of great and renowned teachers who had mastered many sciences.⁷⁰ There were also flags waving on the masts of ships heaving in the port of Puhār like huge elephants chafing at their posts. Yet others, flying over shops where fish and flesh were being sliced and fried and whose thresholds were strewn with fresh sand and flowers, announced the sale of high-class liquor to their numberless customers.

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In the same poem which so vividly describes the external appearance of the city, there occurs the following idealised description of its merchants and traders and their morale:⁷¹

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‘They shunned murder, and puts aside theft; pleased the gods by fire offerings; raised good cows and bulls; spread the glory of the Brahmans; gave (their guests) sweets to eat and (sometimes) foodstuffs raw; in these ways was their kindly life filled with endless good deeds. Holding to the golden mean, like the peg of the loving farmer’s yoke, they feared the untrue and ever spoke the truth; they regarded others’ rights as scrupulously as their own; they took nothing more than was due to them and never gave less than was due from them; trading thus in many articles of merchandise, they enjoyed an ancient heritage of prosperity and lived in close proximity to one another.’

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The general plan of the town of Puhār is described in considerable detail in canto V of the *Śilappadikāram*. The town built on the northern bank of the Kāvēri near its mouth comprised two parts, Maruvūr-pākkam near the sea and Paṭṭinap-pākkam to its west. These were separated by a stretch of open ground taken up by a garden of trees under the shade of which was held the daily market of the city. Near the beach, in Maruvūr-pākkam were terraced mansions and warehouses with windows shaped like the eyes of the deer.

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There was the abode of the prosperous *yavanas* whose pleasant features arrested the eyes of spectators, and of other foreigners who, for the gains from their maritime trade, lived close to one another on quite friendly terms. Vendors of fragrant pastes and powders, of flowers and incense, weavers who worked silk, wool or cotton, traders in sandal, *agil*, coral, pearls, gold and precious stones, grain-merchants, washermen, dealers in fish and salt, sellers of betel-leaves and spices, butchers, sailors, braziers and copper-smiths, carpenters and blacksmiths, painters and sculptors (stucco-workers), goldsmiths, tailors and cobblers, makers of toys in pith and cloth, and the numerous *pāṇar* who were experts in the music of the lute and flute—these and others had their residence in Maruvūrpākkam. In the Paṭṭiṉap-pākkam were the broad royal street, the car street and the bazaar street. Rich merchants, brahmans, farmers, physicians, astrologers lived in their respective quarters. ‘Surrounding the palace were the houses of charioteers, horse and elephant riders and the soldiers who formed the body-guard of the king. Bards, minstrels and panegyrists, actors, musicians and buffoons, chank-cutters and those skilled in making flower garlands and strings of pearls, time-keepers whose duty it was to cry out the *nāḷikais* or divisions of time, as each passed, and other servants of the palace also resided within the limits of Paṭṭiṉap-pākkam.’⁷²

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Of the overseas trade of the Cōḷa kingdom in the Śaṅgam Age again we get an excellent idea from a few lines of the *Paṭṭiṉappālai*. The city of Puhār had a large colony of foreign merchants from different parts of the world.

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‘Like the large crowd gathered in a city of ancient renown on a festival day when people from many different places betake themselves to it with their relatives, persons from many good countries speaking different tongues had left their homes and come to reside (in Puhār) on terms of mutual friendship’.⁷³

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Of the articles of foreign trade we have the following description from the same source:⁷⁴

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‘Under the guardianship of the gods of enduring glory, horses with a noble gait had come by the sea; bagfuls of black pepper had been brought in carts; gems and gold born of the northern mountain, the sandal and *agil* from the western mountain, the pearl of the southern sea, the coral of the western sea, the products of the Ganges (valley), the yield of the Kāvēri, foodstuffs from Ceylon, and goods from Kāḷagam,⁷⁵ all these materials, precious and bulky alike, were heaped together in the broad streets overflowing with their riches.’

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Of the ports in other parts of the Tamil country we have similar descriptions in the literature of the Śangam.⁷⁶ Even inland cities like Madura had guards of ‘dumb *mlecchas*’ and ‘*yavanas*’ in complete armour keeping watch in the king’s palaces. The *Perumbāṇāṟṟuppaḍai*,⁷⁷ a poem of the same period, speaks of tall lighthouses on the coast summoning ships to harbour by the night.

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If we compare this evidence with that of the classical writers of the early centuries of the Christian era, we shall see that the data drawn from these two disparate sources work into one another so closely that it becomes quite obvious that they relate to the same period of history. The author of the *Periplus* says positively that the Roman merchants raised every year beautiful maidens for the harems of Indian kings and the fact is confirmed by what passes in some dramas of India.⁷⁸ The chart of Peutinger, prepared at a time when the Roman Empire was flourishing in all its power, carries on the sheet devoted to India, by the side of the names of Tyndis and Musiris, the words ‘Temple of Augustus.’⁷⁹ Large quantities of Roman coins found in the interior of the Tamil land⁸⁰ attest the extent of trade, the presence of Roman settlers in the Tamil country and the periods of the rise, zenith and decay of this active commerce. Casual statements made by the classical authors and, more decidedly, the evidence of the early Chinese annals, prove that along the sea-route from the Far-East to the West, India acted as an intermediary for many generations. The maritime trade of the Indian ocean in the early centuries of the Christian era is in itself a subject too vast, and authentic evidence on it is too extensive,⁸¹ for us to attempt anything more than to draw attention to a few of its aspects that should interest students of Cōḷa history.

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The feeble beginnings of the trade between the Roman Empire and India, confined at first to articles of luxury, may be traced to the reign of Augustus, if not to an earlier time. Trade with the East was one of the chief factors that brought about the extension and consolidation of the Roman Empire in that direction, and the Arabian expedition of Aelius Gallus, though not a complete success, secured good harbours in the south of Arabia for the Roman traders on their way from Egypt to India. In the reign of Augustus, despite the 'embassies' to him from the Pāṇḍya country, this commerce was by no means extensive or economically important; the notices of some contemporary writers, whose imagination was struck by such trade, has led modern scholars, on the whole, to exaggerate its significance. But it soon assumed new and unexpected proportions, and ceased to be the negligible branch of Roman trade that it was in the beginning. The growth proceeded steadily through the times of the Julii and Claudii, and though there was a lively trade by land, the maritime commerce of Egypt with Arabia, and through Arabia with India, was the most considerable branch of the commerce with the East. So long as the trade was confined to luxuries and carried on through Arab intermediaries, the Romans paid for it mostly in gold and silver, and the oft-quoted statement of the elder Pliny that not a year passed without the Empire paying out a hundred million sesterces (about £ 1,087,500) to India, China and Arabia⁸² has, most likely, reference to this early phase. After Augustus, the trade with India grew naturally in the favourable atmosphere of a great Empire. 'The discovery of the monsoons by Hipparchus of Alexandria in the late Ptolemaic or early Roman times, as well as the natural tendency of a growing trade to become more than a trade in luxuries and a merely passive trade on one side, led to the establishment of a direct route by sea between Egypt and India. The main centre of traffic was now Alexandria. The Arabian harbours lost their importance. ... The new route was fully established at the date of the Periplus, that is, under Domitian. The trade with India gradually developed into a regular exchange of goods of different kinds between Egypt on the one side and Arabia and India on the other. One of the most important articles which came from India was cotton,⁸³ another probably was silk. Both of these products were worked up in the factories of Alexandria, which sent in exchange glass, metal ware, and probably linen.'⁸⁴ Nothing can prove better the increasing volume and regularity of the Indian trade of the Roman Empire than the contrast between the meagre description of the direct trade route to India given by the author of the *Periplus* and the elaborate precision of Ptolemy’s descriptions in the first half of the second century A.D. Ptolemy’s account shows that the Roman trade now reached beyond India to Indo-China and Sumatra, and that the trade with India and China was highly developed and quite regular. Relatively few Roman merchants visited the lands of the Far-East themselves; Southern India obviously acted as intermediary in the trade between China and the West. The carrying trade between the Malaya Peninsula and Sumatra in the East and the Malabar coast in the West was largely in the hands of the Tamils.⁸⁵ The direct trade between Rome and Southern India declined and died out in the period of military anarchy in the Roman Empire of the third century. ‘Practically no coins of the third century have been found in India. Business relations were not resumed till order and a stable gold currency had been re-established in the Byzantine period,’⁸⁶ and then mostly through intermediaries.

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Of the carrying trade of the Indian ocean and the Arabian sea, the Cōḷas had an important share and controlled ‘the largest and most extensive of the Coromandel coast.⁸⁷ In the harbours of the Cōḷa country, says the author of the *Periplus*, ‘are ships of the country coasting along the shore as far as Damirica;⁸⁸ and other very large vessels made of single logs bound together, called *sangara*; but those which make the voyage to Chryse and to the Ganges are called *colandia* and are very large.’⁸⁹ Here three kinds of craft are distinguished by the author of the *Periplus*—light coasting boats for local traffic, larger vessels of a more complicated structure and greater carrying capacity, and lastly the big ocean-going vessels that made the voyages to Malaya and Sumatra, and the Ganges. Quite obviously, the light coasting craft is what the poet Rudraṅgaṇṇanār had in mind when he described rows of roomy boats which had returned laden with grain secured in exchange for the white salt they had sold and which were seen in the back-waters of the port of Puhār tied to rows of pegs and looking like so many destriers.⁹⁰ The same writer mentions elsewhere larger ships which carried flags at their mastheads and which he compares to big elephants. Navigation in the high seas and the dangers attendant on it in foul weather are picturesquely described in the *Maṇimēkalai* in a forcible simile in which the mad progress of Udayakumara in search of Maṇimēkalai⁹¹ is compared to that of a ship caught in a storm on the high sea:

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‘The captain trembling, the tall mast in the centre broken at its base, the strong knots unloosed and the rope cut asunder by the wind, the hull damaged and the sails rent and noisy, like the ship caught in a great storm and dashed about in all directions by the surging waves of the ocean.’

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This coincidence of testimony drawn from the early literature of the Tamil country and the *Periplus* on the conditions of maritime trade in the Indian seas in the early centuries of the Christian era is indeed very remarkable in itself. When one considers this in the light of other evidence from Indo-China and the islands of the archipelago on the permeation of Indian influences in those lands from very early times, one can hardly fail to be struck by the correctness of the conclusion reached by Schoff:⁹² ‘The numerous migrations from India into Indo-China, both before and after the Christian era, give ample ground for the belief that the ports of South India and Ceylon were in truth, as the *Periplus* states, the centre of an active trade with the Far-East, employing larger ships, and in greater number, than those coming from Egypt.’ We shall see that, when after a long eclipse, the power of the Cōḷa kings revived in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the sea-faring instincts of the people had not deserted them and that, in the favourable conditions then obtaining, they attempted tasks more venturesome than anything they had achieved in the earlier age.

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