The Colas c9.15

c9.15

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