The Colas c23.96

c23.96

Attention has been drawn, earlier in this chapter, to the effects, on the central government, of the progressive multiplication of quasi-independent local chieftaincies. The long list of Kulōttunga's feudatories, some given above, and the rest to be gathered from the inscriptions of the reign, shows how rapidly conditions were changing for the worse from the stand-point of the central administration. It was a movement in which cause and effect reacted on each other. The growing weakness of the centre rendered necessary new arrangements of a more or less feudal character for local regulation and defence; these arrangements in their turn stood in the way of the centre regaining its former ascendancy when it attempted to do so. Political compacts among local rulers attest the growth of imperia in imperio until the local *imperia* burst the shell of the central *imperium* under whose protection they had at first begun to take shape; and these compacts are now seen to become even more numerous in the reign of Kulōttunga III than under his predecessor. If it is remembered that no Cōḷa inscriptions of this period are forthcoming from the Pāṇḍya country and that, apparently, the authority of the Cōḷa ruler was not felt in the day-to-day administration of this area, it will be seen that the sphere of these compacts among local rulers is co-terminous with the territory under the direct rule of Kulōttunga. It is needless to detail the compacts or their terms here.¹⁸¹ It should, however, be noted that for every such, recorded agreement to which we have access at present, there must have been many others which were unrecorded or of which the records have either perished or are yet to be recovered. By these local alliances, therefore, the regular functioning of the king's government must have been very seriously hampered. It is true that, as we shall see, under Kulōttunga III and even under his unlucky successors Rājarāja III and Rājēndra III, the forms of administrative procedure present the same appearance as in the best days of the empire under Rājarāja I and Rājēndra I; but the spirit behind these forms could no longer have been the same.