The Colas c12.3

c12.3

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.