The Colas c34.4
The Cōḷas c34.4
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c34.4.1
The names of some works have been preserved casually in the inscriptions; these works are altogether unknown otherwise; they were once considered worthy of public recognition, but having no access to the works themselves, we are not in a position to decide if the recognition was a homage to their literary excellence or was the result of other causes, local or personal. However that may be, the names of these works and the occasions for their being mentioned in inscriptions give us some idea of the extent of popular interest in literary productions and of the types of literature that commanded popularity. Rājarāja I, perhaps the greatest emperor of the line, was the subject of two works, a drama and a *Kāvya*. They are the *Rājarājēśvara-nāṭakam* and the *Rājarāja-vijayam*;¹ the former was to be enacted in the great Tanjore temple during festivals and the latter was to be read in the temple at Tiruppūndurutti, and endowments were created to provide for both. It is not certain if these works were in Tamil or Sanskrit; it seems probable that the *nāṭakam* was not a drama based on Rājarāja's life, but rather a dramatic representation of the construction of the great temple itself, if it was not merely an attempt to popularise some Śaiva legends. The *Rājarāja-vijayam* might have been a quasi-historical poem treating of Rājarāja's reign.
c34.4.2
In any case, both the works must have contained several allusions, if not accurate descriptions, of some of the most striking episodes in Rājarāja's life, and the loss of these works is indeed much to be regretted. Kulōttunga I was the subject of another work, *Kulōttunga-Cōḷa-caritai*, by Tirunārāyaṇa-bhaṭṭa, also called Kavi-kumuda-candra, a pandit from Mānakulāśaniccēri in Tribhuvani, and the poet was given as reward (*sarkāram*) land of the extent of half a *nilam* and two *mā*-s by the *sabhā* of the village, the land being always assessable only at the rate prevailing for the twelfth grade. The award was made by the *sabhā* in accordance with an order from the king requiring them to adjudge the *kāvya* and reward the author suitably.² Two inscriptions from Cuddalore, South Arcot, dated 1111 and 1119, record gifts of tax-free land in recognition of a *sthalapurāṇa* and a *nāṭaka* (based on local legends) composed by a certain Kamalālaya Bhaṭṭa;
c34.4.3
the works were called *Kannivana-purāṇam* and *Pūm-puliyūr-nāḍagam*, names which seem to imply that they were Tamil works of a popular character.³ In endowing a lamp at Tiruvālangāḍu, North Arcot, in 1210 the donor, Aṟanilaiviśākhan Trailōkyamallan Vatsarājan of Arumbākkam, describes himself as a person who rendered the Bhārata in elegant Tamil and discovered the path of Śiva.⁴ In 1146 a certain Marudattūr-uḍaiyān states that he gave to the temple at Nāngupaṭṭi some land which he had received from Vedavanamuḍaiyān of Paiyyūr whom he had celebrated in verse.⁵ Two other instances occur in inscriptions which, though doubtless of the Cōḷa period, cannot be more precisely dated as the names of the kings in whose reigns the records were engraved are not given. When the king was witnessing a dance by Pūngōyil-nāyakat-talaikkōli in one of the pavilions in the temple at Tiruvārūr, he was pleased to order the gift of some *iṟaiyili* land in the *brahmadēya* village Vāyāṟṟūr to Pūngōyil Nambi who had celebrated a feudatory of the king (*nammakkaḷ*), Vīraśoḷa Aṇukkar, in a poem called *Vīraṇukkavijayam*;⁶ evidently the Nambi and the *talaikkōli* were ministering in the same shrine. Lastly, the officers of the treasury of the temple of Tiruvallam gave away 100 *kulis* from the temple lands to Varadayap-pulavar of Kuṟaṭṭi who had composed the *Vallai-andādi*, a poem in praise of the local deity.
c34.4.4
These examples of forgotten poems mentioned in the inscriptions, and nowhere else, attest the existence of a fairly widespread literary activity of a popular character. When we add to this, the list of poems and other works fragments of which are preserved in the older commentaries and glosses, we may safely conclude that much excellent work has been lost beyond recovery. This is true to some extent of the ancient literature of any country; but with regard to South India, the impression is hard to resist that this loss has been very considerable and that, with some remarkable exceptions, the survivals have been the result more of caprice and accident than of deliberate choice or of an active literary criticism.