The Colas c25.2

c25.2

In this and the succeeding chapters, an attempt is made to describe the state of government and society in the Cōḷa country from the accession of Vijayālaya to the downfall of the Cōḷa empire. Such a description must necessarily be very imperfect, as it has to be pieced together from scanty material, scattered over a wide area and as yet not fully understood. Numerous as are the inscriptions, the task of interpreting them can hardly be said to have begun, and but for the access I had, by the courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India, to the unpublished inscriptions in the epigraphist’s office at Madras, this survey must have remained even more meagre than it is. The deplorable lack of a settled chronology for the indigenous literature imposes a serious handicap on the student who seeks to use it in historical reconstruction. Welcome as it is, the light shed on South Indian affairs by foreign travellers and chroniclers of this age is faint and flickering. Numismatics again offers us more problems than solutions; and taking the area and duration of Cōḷa rule into account, we may well say that the number and variety of Cōḷa coins known to-day are almost inconsiderable. Fortunately, we seem to be in a better situation with regard to the monuments of the period, and there is no lack of authentic and valuable material for an appreciation of its architecture and sculpture. For the study of government and social life, however, as for that of political history, our primary source must remain epigraphy, aided by a cautious use of literary material.