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The Colas c9: Chapter I. Sources

The Cōḷas c9

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English

Chapter I. Sources

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On the history of the Cōḷas, as on many other subjects of early Indian history, we had, till about 1900, little information of an authentic character. When, in the early years of the last century, Col. Mackenzie made his great effort to survey all and collect as many as possible of the antiquarian remains of the Madras Presidency, his agents in the Tanjore district failed to discover anything more remarkable on the ancient Cōḷas than the *Cōḷavaṁśacaritram*. This is a late *Sthalapurāṇa* which is legendary and full of miracles. Tradition knew nothing of the real history of the older rulers of the land and could not tell if the Cōḷa dynasty numbered eighty-four kings or sixteen. Epigraphy has made remarkable progress in South India during the last fifty years. Hultzsch, Venkayya and Krishna Sastri have brought out scholarly editions of many of the inscriptions. Of the Śaṅgam literature, which is doubtless the earliest group of Tamil writings extant, considerable portions have been recovered and published. Now it is both possible and necessary to attempt a comprehensive study which shall bring together the results so far attained, and so to approach a definitive history of the Cōḷas.

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To attempt a task of this nature in a subject which, thanks to fresh discoveries or new interpretations of old material, is apt to have its foundations disturbed from time to time, is, we are warned, to run the risk of our structure collapsing no sooner than it is reared. But this is, in regard to Cōḷa history, greatly to under-estimate the permanence of the results reached so far; for a careful review of the steps by which the reconstruction of this history has proceeded since the days when the clues obtained from Eastern Cāḷukya copper-plates were correlated to the evidence from the Cōḷa inscriptions of Tanjore and other places in the Tamil country, must convince the most sceptical among scholars that a considerable tract of-ascertained knowledge has been added permanently to the history of South India. Even the discovery, in recent years, of the important Karandai (Tanjore) plates of Rajendra I and the Chārāla plates of Vīrarājendra¹ has not made any great difference to the general outline of the political history of the Cōḷas. A settled and continuous narration of the political history of the Cōḷas appears therefore not merely quite possible to undertake, but likely to be of more than transient interest. The case for such an undertaking becomes stronger if it is observed that, in its administrative system and in its literary and artistic achievement, Tamil civilisation may be said to have attained its high water mark under the Cōḷa empire of the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Under this empire also flourished in their greatest strength the sea-faring instincts of the people of Southern India which enabled them to add for a time an overseas empire to the more abiding prospects of a profitable trade with the states of the Far-East. The telling of a story which fills so large a place in the past life of the land and is so full of colour and incident should not be unduly postponed. At the same time we should recognise that, in regard to certain points of the story, the preliminary researches, of which one should have desired to avail oneself, have yet to be made; and even the attempt to paint the picture as a whole may be the means, by drawing attention to their need, of bringing such researches into being.

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The history of the Cōḷas falls naturally into four divisions: the age of the literature of the Śaṅgam, the interval between the close of the Śaṅgam age and the rise of the Vijayālaya line, the Vijayālaya line which came to prominence in the ninth century A.D. and lastly, the Cāḷukya-Cōḷa line of Kulōttuṅga I and his successors from the third quarter of the eleventh century to about the middle of the thirteenth. Nearly two centuries before the rise of Vijayālaya in the neighbourhood of Tanjore, there flourished a Cōḷa kingdom in the Telugu districts comprising portions of Cuddapah, Kurnool and Anantapūr,² whose kings traced their descent from Karikāla. Nothing definite is known, however, of their connection with the early Cōḷas. Again, from about the twelfth century, there were a number of local dynasties which claimed also to be among the descendants of Karikāla and to belong to the Kaśyapa *gōtra*. Besides their legendary pedigree there seems to be no evidence connecting them in any manner with the ordered scheme in which the different generations of contemporaries can be marked off from one another has not been easy. Some writers have been apt to draw on their imagination and invent genealogical connections not supported by the sources; others have confessed themselves beaten in the game and have denounced the colophons as late and untrustworthy guesses, not worth much consideration at the hands of the modern historian.⁴ Before adopting this counsel of despair, one would do well to recollect that some anthologies, like the *Kalittogai*, are said to have been put together by a poet represented in the collection itself, and that no reasoned case has been made out against accepting the literary tradition relating to these anthologies and the individual poems in them.⁵ In any attempt to deal systematically with the data drawn from these poems, the casual nature of the poems and the wide difference between the purpose of the anthologist who brought them together and that of the modern historian must not be lost sight of; or one might fall easily into the error of weaving a continuous story out of discontinuous material.

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On the history of the Cōḷas of the Vijayālaya line, there is an abundance of authentic material from diverse sources. This makes the narration of their history a relatively easy task. But of the fortunes of the Cōḷas in the interval between the end of the Śaṅgam age and the rise of Vijayālaya, that is, in the age of Pāṇḍya-Pallava dominance, we have practically no record. The scanty references to them in the Pallava and Cāḷukya inscriptions are but feebly supplemented by the hagiology of Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism relating to the period.

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The dynasty of Vijayālaya has left behind a large number of stone inscriptions and a few copper-plate grants of great value to the historian. The illustrious Rājarāja I, under whom South Indian monarchy attained a sweep and splendour till then unknown, conceived the idea of prefixing to his inscriptions a set historical introduction recounting, in an ornate and poetic style of Tamil, the main achievements of his reign and kept up-to-date by additions made to it from time to time. The narration of the descent of a king and, incidentally, of some salient facts relating to himself and his ancestors was for centuries before Rājarāja's accession the more or less universal practice of kings and chiefs who followed the norm set before them by the *Smṛti* and *Dharmaśāstra* of the country for the drawing up of charters (*Śāsanam*) setting forth gifts (*dāna*) of various kinds. But such narration formed part, generally speaking, only of copper-plate grants (*tāmraśāsana*) and was composed *de novo* on each separate occasion; and this practice, while it gave full scope for the fancy of the poet-composer of the *praśasti*, sometimes resulted in contradictory and confusing statements made about the same king in different grants. In ordering, therefore, the writing, on stone, in set form and in the language of the people, of an official and authorised account of the leading events of his reign, Rājarāja initiated a practice which, as it was kept up by his successors, not only satisfied the boundless vanity of this race of kings, but furnishes to the historian a formal record of exceptional value of the transactions of each reign.⁶ Most of these historical introductions have been the subjects of scholarly discussion and elucidation by Hultzsch and Venkayya in the earlier volumes of the *South Indian Inscriptions*, and though these *mey-kkīrttikaḷ* occasionally merit the waggish description of them as *poy-kkīrttikaḷ*, still, as a rule, they furnish invaluable guidance to the internal chronology and general history of the reign, besides providing picturesque and trustworthy accounts of particular events.

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Few of these inscriptions are purely historical in aim and character. The one at Tiruvēndipuram⁷ recording in detail the tribulations of Rājarāja III and the relief he obtained from the intercession of his Hoysaḷa contemporary, is the most considerable among the handful of purely historical inscriptions. Generally speaking, inscriptions record gifts and endowments of a public or private nature, usually to temples, *maṭhas* and Brahmans; sometimes the construction of a temple or its renovation, or the setting up of a new image forms the subject of an inscription. To provide for the maintenance of a lamp in a temple was a common method of earning religious merit for oneself or of expiating an offence. This was done by gifts of money or cattle calculated at so much or so many per lamp, and it was possible for two or more persons to endow a lamp jointly and apportion the merit among themselves in accordance with the share contributed by each. Often the lamps were to burn throughout the day and night, to be perpetual, (*nandā viḷakku*);⁸ but day-lamps, night-lamps for the occasions when *pūja* was performed (*śandi*) were also known.⁹ When the lamps were provided for by gifts of cattle, the expression ‘*śāvā-mūvā-ppērāḍu*’ invariably occurs, and it means literally ‘the big sheep that heither die nor age.’ That this was only a formal way of expressing the permanence of the endowment becomes clear from the use of the same expression even where cows, and not sheep, are given. Moreover, if for any reason the original herd went down in numbers, and in one instance a herd of fifty cows was reduced to twenty-six in less than three years,¹⁰ the fact was taken into account in assessing the obligations of the herdsmen for the future. Among the donors we find not only kings and their officials, but severai corporations including occupational and commercial guilds, caste organisations, military groups, and village assemblies, and many private individuals, men and women. The class of courtesans, the *dēvaraḍiyār*, ‘servants of the Gods’, often made considerable benefactions to temples which were suitably recognised by privileges of a hereditary nature being conferred on them in relation to the services and festivals in the temples concerned.

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Several inscriptions were obviously intended to publish and preserve in a more or less permanent form decisions and agreements on matters of public importance. In this class, which though not extensive is doubtless of greater interest to the student than the more numerous donative records, we find royal orders on taxation and land-revenue, the resolutions of village assemblies on their own constitutional arrangements, their awards in disputes between communities or other corporate organisations, judgments delivered against persons guilty of theft, adultery, murder and other crimes, and political compacts between powerful feudatory chieftains of particular localities. Quite often, inscriptions on temple walls served the purpose of a public registration office by conserving a trustworthy record of sales, mortgages and other forms of transfers of property-rights in village-lands.¹¹ Sometimes a record is expressly described as the copy of a copperplate grant.¹² A unique inscription from Tiruviḍaivāyil (Tanjore) preserves an otherwise unknown Dēvāram of Ñānasambandar on the local shrine.

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The language and script of the Cōḷa inscriptions varied with the time and place of the records. The language most commonly employed was Tamil; some Sanskrit records are known, besides several bilingual inscriptions employing both. Kannaḍa and Telugu were also employed in the Karṇāṭaka and Telugu areas. The assumption has sometimes been made¹³ that Tamil was the prevailing language in Cōḷa times in all places where the Tamil inscriptions of Cōḷa rulers are found, and that Tamil receded from these areas at a time subsequent to the period of Cōḷa rule in these parts. Such inscriptions are, however, only proof at best of the presence of some Tamil immigrants in non-Tamil regions that were brought for a time under Cōḷa rule. The recovery of some Telugu and Kannaḍa records of the Vijayanagar rulers and their Nāyak viceroys, and of the Hoysaḷas from distinctly Tamil areas cannot prove that the Tamil country exchanged its language for Telugu or Kannaḍa during the period of these records. The long Marathi inscription of Tanjore of A.D. 1803 is another instance. Vaṭṭeḷuttu was the prevalent script in which Tamil was written in the early centuries of the Christian era in the Pāṇḍya and Cēra countries; in the former it gave place to Tamil about the time of the Cōḷa conquest¹⁴ though 'in the insulated *malaināḍu* (Malabar) it continued as late as the middle of the eighteenth century A.D.' The Sanskrit language employed the Grantha script, closely allied to the Tamil in its evolution. Numerous as are the published inscriptions from which the evolution of the script can be traced with tolerable accuracy, chronological arguments drawn from palaeography are generally not so conclusive as might be wished, and must be received with caution. There are fewer chances of stone inscriptions being found to be forgeries than copperplate grants and, as a matter of fact, very few Cōḷa inscriptions are of doubtful authenticity. One of the most conspicuous examples is that of a record¹⁵ purporting to be dated in the twenty-ninth regnal year of a Rājēndracōḷa Rājakēsari. By mixing up in its historical introduction the events of different reigns, the record rouses suspicion; its palaeography belongs to the fourteenth century, and it is found in a temple of which the walls bear no other inscription of an earlier date than the reign of Rājarāja III.

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From the tenth century A.D., the period of Cōḷa rule was a great epoch in the building of structural stone temples. The walls of the new temples, their pillars and their plinths were usually covered with inscriptions in course of time. The great temple of Rājarājēśvara in Tanjore furnishes, in this respect, only a leading example of a practice very common at the time. We are expressly told¹⁶ that before older structures were pulled down for rebuilding a shrine, the inscriptions on the walls were, in many cases, copied out in books and re-engraved later on the walls of the new structure. Even brick temples had sometimes inscriptions engraved on their walls.¹⁷ We shall never know the extent of the damage inflicted in recent years by the ignorant piety of renovators of ancient shrines. Government have been unduly slack in stopping such damage; they have even refused to lay down a procedure to be followed by renovators which would have minimised the extent of the damage.¹⁸ Sometimes inscriptions are found engraved on rocks and boulders not forming parts of temples, but they are the exception.

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The copper-plate grants known by the names of Anbil, Leyden (larger), Tiruvālangāḍu and Karandai, as well as the Kanyākumārī stone inscription and the Chārāla plates of Vīrarājēndra, give long legendary genealogies intended to bring out the solar origin of the Cōḷa dynasty. The Udayēndiram plates of Pṛithivīpati II Hastimalla¹⁹ give a much shorter list of the legendary ancestors of Vijayālaya. Of the several names in these legendary lists, which are by no means identical with one another,²⁰ only two or three names appear to be historical. Karikāla, Kōcceṅgaṇān and probably also Kiḷḷi may be identified with the kings of the same names of whom we hear in the Tamil literature of the Śaṅgam age. Barring the names of these kings, however, and some common legends,—e.g., that of Manu sentencing his son to death as he had by an accident crushed a calf to death under his chariot-wheel, and the story of Śibi rescuing a dove from the pursuit of a vulture by offering it his own flesh—there is nothing else to indicate the relation in which the Cōḷas of the Vijayālaya line stood to those of an earlier time mentioned in early Tamil literature. We shall see that even in regard to Karikāla and Kōcceṅgaṇān the account given in the copper-plates is more legendary than historical and has little in common with the earlier literary accounts.

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The stone inscriptions often contain astronomical data which, being less enigmatic than those from the Pāṇḍyan inscriptions of a later age, have yielded, in the hands of Kielhorn and others, results of great value to Cōḷa chronology. It is, however, easy to exaggerate the significance of such data. 'The fact that a date has been recorded accurately does not prove the authenticity of a record, any more than an incorrect date proves that the record in which it is put forward is spurious.'²¹ Relatively few inscriptions quote any definite era like the Śaka or Kaliyuga,²² but in several instances the details furnished are so full and accurate that, together with the historical introductions characteristic of particular monarchs and the regnal years cited, they have led to the attainment of chronological results of precision and value. These results show that whenever possible the Cōḷa monarchs followed the practice of choosing their successors and associating them in the administration of the country in their own life-time. This must have been done with the double object of avoiding disputed successions and providing opportunities for proper training, sufficiently early in life, for the future sovereigns of the country.

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Sometimes years elapsed between the date when a royal order was issued or some transaction took place, and the time when it was engraved on stone. In a record²³ of a money-endowment which was made in the thirtieth year of Parāntaka I, for instance, we are told that part of this money was invested in the thirty-fifth year with the assembly of a neighbouring village. Some important inscriptions give a full account of the different stages that intervened between the issue of a royal order, especially in revenue matters, and its actual execution. A careful study of them throws much welcome light on the administrative machinery and practice of the time. They also tell us a great deal about the numerous taxes, tolls and dues of various kinds in terms not always readily understood, and about the numberless changes in place-names that formed such a marked feature of the Cōḷa period. We also learn much of society, religion, arts and crafts from the inscriptions.

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Side-lights on Cōḷa history are often obtained from the inscriptions of neighbouring dynasties. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscriptions of the time of Kṛṣṇa III, those of the Eastern Cāḷukyas and some even of the Eastern Gaṅgas, and the inscriptions of the Western Cāḷukyas, often go to confirm or modify impressions obtained by a study of Cōḷa records. The records of prominent feudatory dynasties, or of individuals like Kōpperuñjiṅga, become important as we approach the period of the decline of Cōḷa power. Hoysaḷa records also explain in part the politics of the period of decline.

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Next to the inscriptions, monuments are the most interesting and instructive source of history. And for the Cōḷa period these take the form mostly of temples and sculptured halls and towers in them. It was also the age when the art of casting bronze images attained its high-water mark. Though several temples dating from Cōḷa times are in a good state of preservation, very little has been done for the systematic study of their architecture and sculpture. M. Jouveau-Dubreuil has given a shrewd account of their general characteristics in his *Archaeologie du sud de l'Inde*, and for the rest, we have only the haphazard observations scattered in the reports of the Archaeological department. When monuments standing on the surface have received such scant attention, it is no wonder that more ancient monuments buried in the soil remain undisturbed. Yet the importance of this branch of archaeology for the early history of Southern India can hardly be overestimated.²⁴

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Numismatics, which forms an interesting and important branch of archaeology in relation to the history of the rest of India, has so far not yielded, except in a few instances, any striking results for the general history of South India. South Indian coinages, however, have ‘as yet not received a scientific treatment in any way to be compared with that which has obtained such valuable historical results from the coins of the North.’²⁵ The finds of Roman coins and the coinage of the Madura Sultanate have been rather closely studied and with good results. During the period of their paramountcy in Southern India, the Cōḷas issued coins of gold, silver and copper. Specimens of the gold issues are extremely rare; silver coins are not so rare, and copper pieces of different sizes are met with every day. These coins, generally speaking, are of two types—one carrying on both sides the Cōḷa symbol of the tiger in the centre, flanked by the symbols of the subject powers, the Cēra bow and the Pāṇḍyan fish, with a legend giving the name of the king; the other, called by Prinsep and Elliot the ‘Ceylon type’, in which the symbols give place to ‘a rude human figure, standing on the obverse and seated on the reverse.’²⁶ As the ‘Ceylon type’ makes its appearance in the reign of Rājarāja I and the type with the symbols is known to persist for a long time after, even up to the reign of Kulōttunga I, the view, common at one time, that coins of the ‘Ceylon type’ are later than those of the other type must be modified. In fact, it may be doubted if we have any coin specimens clearly of an age anterior to Rājarāja I, so that the ‘Ceylon type’ would appear to be really coeval with the other.²⁷ None of the known specimens of Cōḷa coins have yet been identified with any of the coins mentioned in contemporary inscriptions.

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Literature is in other countries the bed-rock of history; in India it is often a snare. The utter impossibility of basing any part of the ancient history of India solely, or even primarily, upon literary evidence has been deplored by several modern students. Not only is there a paucity of professedly historical works, but of very few really ancient compositions do we know with certainty the time and place of origin. Great books which, like the *Rāmāyaṇa* and the *Mahābhārata*, have for ages served as popular cyclopaedias of national culture, were frequently revised; the time, the authorship, and the extent of such revisions are so obscure that it is hopeless to make an intelligent use of data drawn from these works.²⁸ Lastly, in the few works of which we have definite knowledge in regard to authorship and provenance, a great amount of space is taken up by conventional descriptions, and it is seldom that we come across the plain downright statement of a fact.

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In Tamil literature, the poems of the Saṅgam age are very realistic and *prima facie* trustworthy and do not share the demerits of the literature of a more fulsome age; but by a cruel irony of fate these poems are involved in some chronological obscurity; and the compositions, especially those of the Cōḷa period, of which we know the authors and dates, exhibit in abundant measure all the defects of court poetry. Still, after all allowance is made, the evidence from indigenous literature for the history of the Cōḷa kingdom will be seen to be not inconsiderable in volume and will, if used with care, go far to eke out the testimony of archaeology.

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The Cōḷa empire under Vijayālaya and his successors witnessed one of the greatest periods of literary and religious revival in South India. Sometime in the tenth or eleventh century A.D., the canonical works of South Indian Śaivism were arranged more or less in their modern form by Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi, who was also its first hagiographer and whose work formed the basis of the far more elaborate *Tiruttoṇḍar Purāṇam*, known generally as *Periya Purāṇam*, of Śēkkiḻār, a contemporary of Kulōttunga II in the twelfth century. Great as is the value of the tradition preserved by these writers, they are to be accepted more as witnesses to beliefs current in their own times than as correctly recording what we should now call the early history of Śaivism. This distinction has not been sufficiently considered by those writers who have drawn rather freely from Śēkkiḻār in their accounts of transactions that took place centuries before his time. Moreover, a careful study of the *Periya Purāṇam* reveals that many details for which there is no warrant in Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi's short notes on the saints make their appearance for the first time in Śēkkiḻār's account; and for aught we know, Śēkkiḻār was guided only by his imagination and by popular belief. Such details, however valuable as reflecting a definite, and as it happened the final, stage in the growth of Śaiva hagiology, should not be accepted, without sufficient corroboration from other sources, as part of the early history of Śaivism in South India; much less would they be entitled to credence if they are opposed to the testimony of contemporary inscriptions or other evidence equally trustworthy. It seems only proper, therefore, that we accept the beautiful pen-pictures which abound in Śēkkiḻār's great work as idealised accounts of life and society as he saw them in his own day rather than as studies and portraits of a bygone age. Thus the description of the Brahman village of Ādanūr and of the hamlet of pariahs attached to it in the story of Nanda, the pariah saint, may well be used in any re-construction of rural life in Cōḷa times, allowance being made, of course, for the play of the wellunderstood conventions of literature that dominate such accounts.

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Equally remarkable is the settlement of the Vaiṣṇava canon of the 'Four Thousand Sacred Hymns' which took place about the same time as the Śaiva canon was fixed by Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi. The *Divya sūri-carita* and the *Guruparamparai* form the Vaiṣṇava counterpart of the *Periya Purāṇam* from which they differ in providing an elaborate, though impossible, chronology for the lives of the Vaiṣṇava saints, the Āḻvārs. In addition to being a record of traditions and beliefs prevalent at the time of their composition, these works furnish the background necessary for a proper estimate of Rāmānuja and his place in the history of Vaiṣṇavism. And the great commentaries on the hymns of the Āḻvārs, written in a peculiar jargon more Sanskrit than Tamil, though perhaps of a slightly later age than the Cōḻa period, still have great value for us, as they record in a casual manner several incidents of Cōḻa times. This feature, as well as the idiosyncrasies of language that mark these commentaries, sometimes assist us in elucidating the Cōḻa inscriptions.

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Among works of secular literature which can be dated with accuracy, the most interesting from our point of view are the *Vīraśōḻiyam* of Buddhamitra, the *Kalingattupparaṇi* of Jayangoṇḍār and the three *ulās* and the *Kulōttungan Piḷḷaittamiḻ* of Oṭṭakkūttan. The first is a work on Tamil grammar composed by a Buddhist writer in the reign of Vīrarājēndra. The *Yāpparungalam* and the *Yāpparungalak-kārikai* are other works on one branch of grammar, prosody, by a Jaina writer, Amitasāgara, of somewhat earlier date. These three works possess glosses slightly later than the original texts; and the examples cited by the authors of these commentaries to illustrate particular rules of grammar are often of uncommon interest; they provide fresh information, and confirm, and sometimes elucidate, data drawn from the inscriptions. The *Kalingattupparaṇi* of Jayangoṇḍār is a war-poem of the conventional *paraṇi* type, which has for its subject-matter the conquest of the Kalinga country by Karuṇākarat-toṇḍaimān, the celebrated generalissimo of Kulōttunga I. The poem is justly celebrated for the excellence of its diction and its superb display of metrical effects; it fetched the title of *Kavic-cakravarti* (Emperor of Poetry) to its author, a title which seems to have been kept on as a sort of poet-laureateship, or at any rate was conferred also on Oṭṭakkūttan who, though himself a poet of no mean order, paid his predecessor the high compliment of imitating him closely in his *Takkayāgapparaṇi* on a well-known theme of mythology. For all its fabulous and supernatural elements, and the absurd hyperboles characteristic of it, the *Kaliṅgattu-pparaṇi* is still valuable to the historian as it furnishes much welcome information on the Cōḻa genealogy and on the details of the Kalinga campaign of Kulōttunga, including the route taken by his army. Parts of the poem were translated into English by V. Kanakasabhai some years ago, and the translation was published in the *Indian Antiquary*. Oṭṭakkūttan chose the *ulā* as the vehicle of his encomiums on three successive monarchs who followed Kulōttunga I. The *ulā* is, like the *paraṇi*, a conventional literary form. If the *paraṇi* is *par excellence* a war-poem, the *ulā* is just its opposite; free from the cares and anxieties of his high station, with no troubles domestic or foreign to cloud his happiness, the king with his retinue is conceived as going for a stroll round the capital city; the beginning of the *ulā* generally gives a more or less studied account of the achievements of the king and his ancestors, and provides a somewhat detailed description of the chief men among his courtiers who accompany him and the place they occupy in the administration of the country; this part of the poem is of considerable historical value. What follows in the *ulā* is not of much immediate interest to us; it is, to a modern student, a monotonous account of the amorous looks and the tell-tale acts of the women of the city who, at the sight of the king, become agitated and love-sick. Besides the three *ulās*, on Vikrama, Kulōttunga II and Rājarāja II, Oṭṭakkūttan also wrote the *Kulōttunga-śōḻan-piḷḷait-tamiḻ*, a child-poem on Kulōttunga II; notable for its fine sentiment and high eloquence, this poem is not nearly so useful to us as the *ulās*.

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The number of late chronicles and Sthalapurāṇas is legion. The *Navacōḷacarita*, a Vīra-śaiva compilation available in a Kannaḍa and a Telugu version, the *Bṛhadīśvara-māhātmya* or the *Cōḷavaṁśacarita* in Sanskrit, of which there is a Tamil translation among the Mackenzie Mss., and the *Koṅgudēśa-Rājākkaḷ*, also in the same collection of manuscripts, are the leading examples of this class. But as Fleet has observed,²⁹ the fanciful nature of such works and their utter want of reliability for any purposes of early history ‘are disclosed at once by the very slightest thoughtful examination.’

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Though not copious, the evidence from Chinese writings is extremely valuable on account of its settled chronology and the matter-of-fact nature of the data furnished by it. Arab travellers, Muslim historians and the early European travellers like Marco Polo give important hints on the impression made by South India on foreign observers in those days. This line of external evidence is of particular value for an understanding of the nature and extent of the foreign commerce of the period.

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¹ Karandai plates (unpublished): I am obliged to Mr. N. L. Rao, Government Epigraphist for India, for a transcript of the text. For the Chārāla plates see *EI.* xxv pp. 241-66.

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² *EC.* xii (7) and *EI.* xi, Mālēpāḍu plates.

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³ A relatively late date for this poem, later than A.D. 400, seems to be forced on us by the trend of the discussion of the relation between Canto XXIX of this poem and the *Nyāyapravēśa*, unless indeed this Canto is treated as having suffered a later revision. See *Nyāyapravēśa* (Baroda), pp. xiii-xvi for a succinct review of the discussion by A. B. Dhruva.

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⁴ P. T. Srinivasa Aiyangar, *History of the Tamils* pp. 416-7.

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⁵ For a full discussion of this subject see *Studies*, I.

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⁶ These introductions were, in some inscriptions, omitted in part owing to exigencies of space. e.g. 96 of 1925 of the eleventh year of Rājēndra II. See also *ARE.* 1935-6, II 39.

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⁷ 142 of 1902, *EI.* vii p. 161.

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⁸ It is interesting to observe that Parimēlaḷagar explains the phrase ‘*poyyā viḷakkam*’ in *Kuṟaḷ* 753 by ‘*nandā viḷakku.*’

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⁹ This, I believe, is the correct interpretation of the expression ‘*śandiviḷakku*’ which figures so often in the inscriptions and is usually translated into ‘twilight-lamp.’ See *Tamil Lexicon* s. v. சந்தி—canti.

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¹⁰ 120 of 1926 (year 6 of Rājēndra I).

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¹¹ In 134 of 1926 (Rājak. 16) we have an instance of a temple raising money by mortgaging some of its land to a woman in the queen’s service.

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¹² 180 of 1894 (Kulōttunga I, 23).

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¹³ *ARE.* 1895, I 7 and 1908, II 49. See also Venkayya *IA.* xxxvii pp. 199-200.

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¹⁴ *TAS.* i p. 286.

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16. *ASI.* 1909-10 pp. 128-9; also 92 of 1895 and *ARE.* 1920 II 17.

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17. 123 of 1900; *EI.* vii pp. 145-6.

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18. *ARE.* 1902, I 8 and G.O. (Madras) 763 Public, 6th August 1902. After drawing attention to the destruction of the Kalinari Īśvara by the inhabitants of Tirunāmanallūr, the government epigraphist says in his report: 'The Nāṭṭukkōṭṭai Chetties are spending year by year a portion of their large earnings in repairing the ancient Śiva temples of Southern India. In the course of these "repairs" they have totally destroyed the following shrines with every one of their inscriptions: The Ēkāmranātha temple at Conjeevaram, the Jambukēśvara temple on the island of Śrīraṅgam, the central shrine of the temple at Tiruvuṇṇāmalai, the same at Tiruveṇṇainallūr in South Arcot and the same at Tiruppugalūr in the Tanjore District. Of some of the inscriptions in the first two temples, I have inked estampages in my office. The remainder are lost for ever, as the inscribed stones have been dressed again before rebuilding the temples. Many other temples are now going to be treated in the same manner.' Government declined to restrict the activities of renovators by the issue of prohibitory orders as suggested by the epigraphical department which thereupon made 'a more vigorous attempt to secure impressions of the inscriptions thus threatened with destruction.' This has led to the accumulation of thousands of impressions in the epigraphist's office which have little chance, as things stand, of being published in any reasonable period even in the bald form adopted in *SII.* (Texts). There is also a real danger that in the race between publication and collection, collection might suffer without publication gaining adequately.

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19. *SII.* ii. no. 76.

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20. For a comparison and critique of these lists see *TAS.* iii; also *EI.* xv.

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21. Fleet, quoted by Rice, *EI.* xiv, p. 340.

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22. Writing of the Grāmam inscription of Parāntaka I which is dated in a Kali year and in which the day is expressed by giving the number of days that had elapsed since the beginning of the era, this is what Kielhorn says: 'I may add that this is the earliest known Cōḷa date which can be verified and that, of the 136 dates hitherto examined, it is the only one in which the era of Kaliyuga is quoted. Among the same dates 18 quote the Śaka era: and of these 12 are in Kanarese, 4 in Telugu and only 2 in Tamil inscriptions. The Śaka year 991 is quoted in the date of a Tamil inscription of Vīrarājēndra which does not admit of verification.' *EI.* viii p. 261.

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23. 164 of 1912.

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24. *ARA.* 1912-13, I 10; 1915-6, I. 8.

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25. Rapson-*Sources of Indian History: Coins*, p. 123.

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26. Elliot, p. 108.

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27. 'Very little was known of the real history of the Cōḷas when Elliot wrote his great work on the '*Coins of Southern India*.' He indeed dates the origin of the 'Ceylon type' in the eleventh century (p. 108) and calls it 'a remarkable change' from the earlier type; the Cōḷa coins actually figured and described by him (some of which were considered again by Hultzsch *IA*. xxi p. 323) support this view.

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Rapson (*op. cit.* sec. 126) stereotypes the theory of Elliot and gives, doubtless by oversight, c. A.D. 1022 as the date not only of the introduction of the Ceylon type but of 'the beginning of the reign of Rāja-rāja Cōḷa.' He also describes the figures in the Ceylon types thus. *obv.* king standing: *rev.* king seated. It may be doubtful if the 'rude human figure' (Elliot) which Tufnell (*Hints*, p. 11) took to be that of a '*rāk-ṣasa*' was intended to represent the king. A unique silver coin with legend Śrī Rājarājadēva' (Hultzsch *IA*. xxv, p. 317) combines the squatting figure on the *obv.* with the symbols and legend on the *rev.*

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²⁸ Foulkes's articles in the *Indian Antiquary* on 'Civilisation of the Dekkan down to the 6th Century B.C.' (viii pp. 1 ff) are a measure of what is possible with only such sources at our disposal.

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²⁹ *IA*. xxx pp. 6-7.

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