The Colas c13.4

c13.4

The Vēḷvikuḍi grant of the Pāṇḍyas and some Pallava charters mention the obscure clan of the Kaḷabhras who were responsible for much political unsettlement in the country, and whose overthrow formed the first step in the resuscitation of the power of the Pāṇḍyas and the Pallavas towards the end of the sixth century. We may assume that the predatory activities of the Kaḷabhras² brought the power of the early Cōḷas also to an end. The absence of any allusion to this fact in the Cōḷa inscriptions and copper-plates of the Vijayālaya line is easily accounted for. Unlike the Pāṇḍyas and the Pallavas who quickly succeeded in wresting from the hands of the Kaḷabhras what they had lost to them sometime before, the Cōḷas were submerged for nearly three centuries under the rising tide of the Pāṇḍya and Pallava powers. They could not find their feet again until these newly risen forces had spent themselves in mutual hostility. In the writings of Buddhadatta³ we have singularly interesting evidence on the rule of the Kaḷabhras in the Cōḷa country. The date of Buddhadatta is, unfortunately, not as certain as has sometimes been assumed; the tradition that makes him a contemporary of Buddhaghōṣa is late, and not warranted by any statement in the extensive works of either of these divines.⁴ Buddhadatta might have been the earlier of the two to visit Ceylon for studying Buddhism. It is quite certain, however, that he lived in the dark period of South Indian history after the light of the Śaṅgam literature fails, and before a fresh dawn commences with the Pāṇḍya and Pallava charters mentioned above; and his evidence is all the more welcome. At the close of his *Abhidhammāvatāra*, he gives a glowing account of Kāvēripaṭṭaṇa, with its concourse of rich merchants, its palaces and pleasure-gardens,⁵ and states that, in a great monastery built there by Kaṇhadāsa, he lived for a time and composed that work at the very proper request of Sumati, evidently one of his pupils. Likewise he informs us at the end of his *Vinayaviniccaya* that he composed that work for the sake of Buddhasīha, while he was residing in the lovely monastery of Veṇhudāsa in a city on the banks of the Kāvērī, by name Bhūtamangalaṁ,⁶ described by him as the hub of Cōḷaraṭṭha. He adds also that this work was begun and finished when Accutavikkanta of the Kaḷabhrakula was ruling the earth.⁷ This Accuta could have been no other than the king of the same name who is reputed, in literary tradition,⁸ to have kept in confinement the three Tamil kings, the Cēra, Cōḷa and Pāṇḍya. Some songs about him are quoted by Amitasāgarar, the author of the *Yāpparuṅgalak-kārikai*, in the tenth century A.D. Possibly Accuta was himself a Buddhist. At any rate, by calling the Kaḷabhras a tribe of Kali kings and stating that they uprooted many *adhirājar* and meddled with *brahmadēya* rights, the Vēḷvikuḍi grant makes it clear that there was no love lost between these interlopers and the people of the lands overrun by them. In the colophons to his works, Buddhadatta is called an inhabitant of Uragapura which perhaps means that Uṟaiyūr was his native place.