The Colas c13.14

c13.14

Of the Cōḷas of the Tamil country in this period we know even less than we do about the Rēnāṇḍu Cōḷas; for though there are fugitive references to them in the epigraphs and the literature bearing on the age, which show that the Cōḷas lingered on the banks of the Kāvēri all the time, they tell us little else of historical interest. And no epigraphical or architectural monuments of this period that can be directly attributed to the Cōḷas have yet been discovered. No conclusion can be based on the absence of any reference to the Cōḷa kingdom in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta, as the limits of his conquests are now known to have been much narrower than they appeared once.²¹ The Pallava charters furnish the bulk of the epigraphical evidence on the Cōḷas during this period, and this is, at times, finely supplemented by the W.