The Colas c25.3

c25.3

The historian of India must perhaps remain a stranger to the bracing effects of a consciousness that his is a study of continuous and progressive tendencies steadily working for the amelioration of his fellow-men. He cannot claim that in any sphere of human activity, whether it be in the production and conservation of wealth, in the creation and development of political organisation, or in devotion to the fine arts, or even in the pursuit of religious life and the practice of moral virtues, often held up as the differentia of Indian culture, there has been a steady advance through centuries towards a higher level of achievement. No country in the world, not even the most fortunate, has altogether escaped disorders and revolutions that have often rudely undone, for a time, the noble results of generations of civilised life and work. But the student of India's past finds it hard to resist the impression that at some stage in her history there set in a rot which, spreading soon over all spheres of life, sapped its vitality and made for the continuous loss of her efficiency. Foreign domination, the ascendency of caste, the pessimistic outlook on life started by Buddhism and perfected by the Vedānta, and other causes of an equally sweeping character have been brought forward as the possible source of decay. Even the earlier phase of the history of India, in which she was most herself, little dominated by the foreigner though by no means unwilling to absorb the good that he brought into her ken, and giving freely of the best in her to the rest of Asia without the least attempt at an enforced cultural, much less physical, domination of the lands enriched by her gifts,—even this phase has often been viewed in the shadow of ideas generated by the decadent phase of her subsequent history. Caste was there, and with it also Buddhism and the philosophy of the Vedānta; none of them, nor all of them taken together, did anything, at one time, to sap the foundations of national life and achievement; and much evidence lies to hand to show that, on the contrary, these and other features of Indian life were the results of earnest and, by all human standards, not unsuccessful efforts to solve pressing problems of social and intellectual life in a manner which, however inconsistent with our modern views on these subjects, appears then to have worked tolerably well towards the promotion of mutual understanding and good-will and contentment in a large section of the human race. The history of the Cōḷa empire belongs, on the whole, to this earlier and happier phase of India's history, and we shall see that, in spite of much that appears primitive and even offensive to us, much greater things were accomplished by corporate and voluntary effort, a greater sense of social harmony prevailed, and a consciousness of active citizenship was more widespread when the Cōḷa kings held their sway in Southern India than in more recent times.