The Colas c9.3

c9.3

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.