The Colas c34.47

c34.47

If the literary chronology of Tamil is replete with many unsolved problems, the situation is even worse with regard to Sanskrit literature. We have ample evidence from all sides that Sanskrit learning and literary activity in its various branches found steady encouragement and flourished at a high level throughout the period of our study; attention has been drawn elsewhere to the endowments for colleges where different branches of Vedic and philosophic study were pursued, and to the popularity of the Prābhākara-mīmāmsā and of the *Rūpāvatāra* attested by the inscriptions. A detailed account of Sanskrit literature in this period cannot yet be undertaken, for those preliminary researches are yet to be made without which a general survey of literary activity over two or three centuries can hardly be attempted. But attention may be drawn here to one or two significant facts. First, we have some evidence to show that the Cōḷa monarchs took a personal interest in the growth and spread of Sanskrit studies; from the introductory verses in the Sanskrit lexicon *Nānārthārṇava-samkṣepa*, we learn that a village of Śaiva Brahmins learned in Sanskrit lore was established in the Cōḷa country by Kulōttunga I, that from that village a certain Kēśavasvāmin of the Vatsa gotra, a member of a family of hereditary grammarians, was in the service of Rājarāja II, and that he was commissioned by the king to prepare, for the use of young scholars, this Sanskrit lexicon in which the words are arranged in alphabetical order and their various meanings set forth, as directed by the king himself. A more important instance of royal patronage of Sanskrit learning belongs to a much earlier period. It is this. Mādhava, the son of Veṅkaṭārya and Sundarī, lived in a village on the south bank of the Kāvēri, and composed an extensive *bhāṣya* on the Ṛg-vēda. He says that while writing his great work, he lived in comfort in the country of the most renowned warrior of the world: *Jagatām ekavīrasya viṣaye nivasan sukham*.⁶⁸ This statement implies that he flourished under royal patronage; and though he does not mention the name of his patron monarch, we may surmise that the reference is to Parāntaka I who is said in the Kanyākumārī inscription of Vīrarājēndra to have earned for himself the name Vīra-Cōḍa by conquering the invincible Kṛṣṇarāja.⁶⁹ The great Vēdabhāṣyas of a later age composed under the patronage of the early Vijayanagar rulers would thus seem to have followed the model set by the first great ruler among the Imperial Cōḷas of the Vijayālaya line.