The Colas c14.15

c14.15

The Cōḷa rulers of this time were not slow to acquire for themselves a pedigree; and a mythical ancestry tracing their descent from the sun was soon provided, though some kings of lunar genesis were also mixed up in it. The earliest version of it is in the Anbil plates which give fifteen names before Vijayālaya including the genuinely historical ones of Karikāla, Kiḷḷi and Kōcceṅgaṇān. The Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates swell the list to forty-four, and the Kanyākumārī list runs up to fifty-two, while the Leyden grant is satisfied with a dozen. There are others of varying lengths to be gathered from literary works like the *Kaliṅgattupparaṇi*, the *ulās* of Oṭṭakkūttan and so on. No two of these lists agree, though some names and details are common to all. An eponymous Cōḷa finds a place in all the copper-plates, and the Kanyākumārī inscription dresses up a pretty story³⁴ about his advent to the south. He was drawn in that direction in pursuit of a Rākṣasa who had assumed the form of an antelope, and he was followed by some of his commanders. Then he killed the Rākṣasa and moved along the banks of the Kāvērī, 'the river which brings to the earth, in the guise of water, the nectar obtained by the gods after churning the ocean of milk.' Having bathed in the river, when he looked for some brahmans, apparently to bestow some gifts on them, he found none there; and so he summoned many excellent brahmans from Āryāvarta and settled them on the banks of the river. He then cleared the forest, planted groves of areca-palms and laid out fruit-gardens and otherwise improved the country. Such is the quaint account of the origin of the Cōḷa kingdom as it was imagined by the court-poet of Vīrarājēndra.³⁵ 1. *SII.* ii, No. 76, v. 18; 337 of 1912.