The Colas c12.9

c12.9

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