The Colas c9.17

c9.17

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.