The Colas c12.5

c12.5

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