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Studies in Cola History and Administration c6: I. The "Puram Four Hundred" as a Source of History

Studies in Cōḻa History and Administration c6

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Contents

I. The "Puram Four Hundred" as a Source of History

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The *Puranānūru* is one of the eight major anthologies of the early Tamil classics. Like the *Padirruppattu* and many of the poems in the *Pattuppāttu*, it lays claim to be a collection of contemporary compositions of different poets on the princes and chieftains whose patronage they enjoyed in some form or other. The colophon at the end of each poem generally contains information on the subject of the poem, its author and the occasion for its composition. The authenticity of these colophons has been called in question, and it is our object here to consider whether this has been done on proper grounds. The matter is of some importance to the student of the Early History of the Tamil country. If, as is commonly believed, the colophons embody a tradition, which, apart from the corruptions and losses due to neglect and time, may be accepted as correct, then we must recognise in these poems a quantity of literary evidence of unique value; because then, no other part of India can be said to provide such sober and realistic pictures of contemporary life and politics as these early Tamil classics furnish.[^ *] The data furnished by these poems for historical reconstructions will not be the less valuable on account of their being drawn from casual literary pieces rather than from chronicles or other works of a professedly historical nature. If, however,

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[^ *]: That this is not an unduly high estimate of the value of these poems will be evident to those who, though not in a position to read the Tamil originals, have followed the translations of several of the poems by Pope, Kanakasabhai and other writers in the *Indian Antiquary* and elsewhere.

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the particulars furnished by the colophons turn out, on critical examination, to be undependable improvisations of a later age, the value of the poems themselves to the historian would be greatly reduced, and they would be hardly worthy of any greater credence than most other literary works.

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We shall confine our attention, for purposes of the discussion that follows, to the Puram Four Hundred, although many of the arguments would apply with equal force to the other collections as well. The grammar of Tamil literature classifies its subject-matter under two broad divisions called *Aham* and *Puram*, often somewhat inadequately equated with Love and War respectively. Of these the *Puram* which deals with concrete objective situations (not relating to love) is naturally of more interest to us than the endless analysis and description of psychic attitudes which are the prime concern of the *Aham*. Not that verses pertaining to this last division contain no interesting allusions to historical events and social customs; but these allusions often lack the fullness and directness that is characteristic of the references in the *Puram* group.

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The *Puranānūru* was first published in 1894 by Mahāmahōpādhyāya Paṇḍit V. Svāminātha Aiyar after a careful collation of several manuscripts of the text and of an old commentary for a part of the anthology. He has given a vivid description of the condition of the manuscripts when he took them up, and the cautious and scientific methods followed by him in the preparation of the first edition of this work. Nearly thirty years later, in 1923, the same ripe scholar issued a second edition with the readings brought up-to-date in the light of other manuscripts he had examined in the

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PURANAṄURU

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interval. The colophons to the poems so far as they are known at present, therefore, rest on the authority of the best manuscript sources available and the unrivalled erudition of the greatest living Tamil scholar.

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It must also be observed at the outset that the same scholar drew attention † to the fact that the learned annotator Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar himself found a difficulty in following the system adopted in the grammatical notes which formed part of the colophons of the Puraṉāṉūṟu verses. The divergence between the system of the Tolkāppiyam and that followed in the colophons was accounted for by Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar on the supposition that some writers had followed by mistake systems of grammar later than the Tolkāppiyam and the Agattiyam which alone, in his opinion, applied to the anthologies. It is needless for us to accept this explanation though his opinion that the notes on the Puraṉāṉūṟu verses did not follow the Tolkāppiyam registers a fact which may turn out to be of importance in deciding the question of the authenticity of these notes. The Tolkāppiyam, despite its name and the tradition about its mythical antiquity, betrays signs of not being absolutely the earliest work in the Tamil language; it is quite possible that a critical study of the linguistic and sociological data embedded in the 1600 sūtras of this cyclopaedic work may establish a relatively late date for it. A slight investigation of the employment of finite verbal forms ending in ‘undu’ in the Puraṉāṉūṟu has led one scholar † to the conclusion that some of the verses in that collection are anterior to the Tolkāppiyam in time. The divergence between the grammatical notes to the *Puram* verses and the system of the *Tolkāppiyam* must, on this line of argument, be accounted for on a hypothesis which would be the reverse of that employed by Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about suggesting such an antiquity to the *Puram* collection, though it is a fact that we have no information about the compiler or his time. For in one instance, that of the *Kalittogai*, we have evidence of the collection having been put together by Nallanduvaṉār, one of the poets represented in the collection itself; and this shows that *a priori* assumptions on the length of time that intervened between the actual composition of the poems and the time when they were brought together in an anthology or their colophons supplied may not be as sound as they appear.

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∗ Preface to the first edition. † Mr. K. N Sivaraja Pillai—‘undu’ ennum iḍaiccol piravāgam (Madras University, 1929)

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It is not our aim in this essay to reach a final conclusion on the difficult issues thus raised. Though the volume of the literature of the *Śangam* is not great, the historical and linguistic problems presented by it are so complex, and competent scholars who can deal with them systematically from all aspects are so few, that their proper study can hardly be said to have begun. The linguist waits for the historian to settle the chronology of this literature, without a knowledge of which the study of the growth in language is not feasible; the historian on the other hand, seeing how inconclusive the other lines of evidence are on this question, hopes for some conclusive results from the study of language development. We have therefore to wait for a synthesis to be effected between the different lines of approach and for definite conclusions to emerge on the internal chronology of this literature. Our object here is limited to examining the soundness of

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PURANANŪRU

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the considerations that have been urged against the authenticity of the colophons of the Puranānūru, against their being accepted as a proper basis for history.

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Mr. Venkayya remarks: * “The Tamil anthology Puranānūru, for instance, furnishes the names of a number of Cōḻa kings. It is extremely doubtful if we shall ever be in a position to fix definitely the period when they flourished, much less make out a connected history of their reigns. No doubt we have literary documents assigned—by whom and when we do not know—to the reigns of these Cōḻa kings. But the evidence furnished by these documents and the tradition connecting them with particular Cōḻa kings have to be received with caution.” This caution in dealing with literary evidence is, in itself, admirable. But then, having imposed this reserve on himself in accepting the evidence of literary tradition on Karikāla Cōḻa among others, Mr. Venkayya proceeds forthwith to accept unreservedly all the statements made in eleventh century inscriptions about events that happened, if at all, five centuries before their date, and to suggest on their basis a “provisional date of the Cōḻa king Karikāla.” Now, one may ask whether any statement gains in trustworthiness merely because it is engraved on copper or stone and not written on palm leaf or other more perishable material, and whether it is not possible for a deliberate invention to get into an epigraph, or for a correct tradition to be transmitted in successive copyings of literary documents. The exaggerated caution assumed by some epigraphists in their approach to literary evidence, and the childish faith they occasionally exhibit in hugging the most palpable lies set down on stone and copper may raise a legitimate doubt as to whether their *obiter dicta* * on literary questions are entitled to the same regard as their considered opinion on technical matters within their purview. In any case, it is a strange procedure to adopt in the name of caution to prefer, in writing the history of Karikāla, the late legends of the Eastern Cāḷukya and Teḷugu Cōḍa grants to the sober and realistic statements about that king in the *Puranāṉūṟu* and the *Pattuppāṭṭu* simply because we cannot be sure about who ascribed these poems to Karikāla’s reign and when. Elsewhere, † apparently because of the common name Kiḷḷivaḷavan, Mr. Venkayya identifies the Cōḷa king of the *Maṇimēkalai* story with the Cōḷa who died at *Kuḷamurram* ‡ concerning whom there are eighteen poems in the *Puranāṉūṟu* by no fewer than ten poets and makes the following observations: “In the note appended to each of these poems is mentioned the name of the king which does not figure in the body of the poem. Consequently, the assumption that these ten poets were contemporaries of the king is based on tradition current at the time when the notes were added. In the absence of definite information as to the authenticity of the tradition on which the notes are based, it is safer to abstain from drawing any historical conclusions from them.” It must be stated, however, that in writing so, Mr. Venkayya may have been influenced by his view, which he subsequently withdrew ¶ in his notice of the Śiṉṉamaṉūr plates, that the anthology of the *Puranāṉūṟu* was compiled by Perundēvaṉār, a protege of the Pallava Nandivarman III. The truth is that Perundēvaṉār, whose invocatory poems lead off many of the Śaṅgam anthologies, was an earlier poet of whose Tamil rendering of the Bhāratam, doubtless that mentioned in the larger Śiṉṉamaṉūr plates, only a few verses have been preserved to us in the quotations of later commentators. There is no reason to suppose that he edited the anthology. It is surprising that the correction furnished by the Pāṇḍya plates from Śiṉṉamaṉūr is ignored by Mr. P. T. Srinivasa Aiyangar* who repeats the antiquated view, that Perundēvaṉār the contemporary of Nandi III and the author of a Bhārataveṇbā was also the anthologist of the Śaṅgam poems.

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∗ A. S. I. 1905-6 p 174 n. 7.

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∗ Mr. Venkayya also writes: “According to Tamil literature there was a Pallava king ruling at Kāñci as a contemporary of Karikāla,” and to Kōkkiḷḷi’s son by a Nāga princess “was subsequently assigned Toṇḍaināḍu.” Neither of these statements is supported by the sources.

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† E. I. XI p. 233 n. 3.

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‡ In this Dr. S. K. Aiyangar has followed him—*Maṇimēkalai in its historical setting*, p. 35.

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In the History of the Tamils, the same author makes some statements on the Puraṉāṉūru and urges certain considerations against the authenticity of the colophons which, if wellfounded, would prove almost fatal to all chance of our getting any history from that collection. It is, therefore, necessary to examine them carefully. We shall be led, however, too far afield if we enter on a discussion of his general views on the internal chronology of these poems, or the tests he adopts for separating earlier anthologies from later ones and so on; such a discussion is not necessary for the limited purpose before us. Of the Puraṉāṉūru he says: "It differs from the other collections in several ways. First, it deals with the wars of kings and the gifts they gave to the poets who sang them. Secondly, dealing with wars, it also contains a number of elegies on dead kings and nobles." These are, as has been pointed out already, just the differentiae of Purapporuḷ and hence their great interest for us.

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We may notice, though without stressing it, the inaccuracy of part of the statement which follows: "The first half of this anthology deals with the former subject (wars and gifts), the next fourth with the latter (deaths), and the last fourth seems to be a miscellaneous supplement in which odes discovered later on both subjects were thrust." The division of the collection into two homogeneous sections and a third forming a miscellaneous supplement is purely imaginary, and there is nothing to support the suggestion made that the last section was an afterthought or a later addition. Moreover, on the evidence of one manuscript, Paṇḍit Svāminātha Aiyar suggests that the Puram had three divisions—aṟam, poruḷ and iṉbam. It is, however, when we reach the next distinction drawn by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar between the Puram and the other collections, that his misstatements attain serious proportions. He says: "Thirdly, to a large number of these Puram poems, colophons are added, noting the occasions when the poems were composed. These colophons seem to have been written by a person later than the one who made the anthology and who derived the information partly by a study of the poems and partly from tradition." To say that colophons to individual poems are a distinguishing feature of the Puram Four Hundred is not correct.

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The objective nature of the Puram necessitated longer colophons mentioning the personnel and occasion of each composition, unlike the Aham verses which were for the most part self-contained and therefore got only brief colophons giving short grammatical notes and the name of the composer. Colophons similar to those of the Puram are also to be found attached to some of the songs in the Paṭṭuppāṭṭu and to poems in the ‘Ten Tens’ (*Padirruppattu*) that have come down to us. To say, then, that colophons were written for a large number of poems in the *Puram* is to imply that there are several for which no such colophons are known to have existed. There is nothing to support this implication. Only the state of our manuscript sources * has been responsible for the irretrievable loss of several of them. Lastly, to postulate two persons one of whom supplied the colophons at an indefinite interval after the other had made the anthology is altogether gratuitous. Why the author of the anthology could not have himself read the poems and accepted traditional information at the time the anthology was made, and supplied the colophons; further, why the colophons might not have been added to individual poems earlier than their entry into an anthology are matters which are apparently not deemed worthy of consideration by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar.

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The truth is that we now know so little of the technical conditions which governed the propagation and preservation of literature and literary tradition in the distant past that it is unprofitable to hazard surmises against which may be pitted other surmises not less plausible. But this we do know: that in some manner that seems to us such a marvel, the ancients commanded the means of handing down from generation to generation, orally or otherwise, a considerable literature with exceptional accuracy. The history of the Vedic Samhitas with their *anukramanis* and of the early Buddhist Pali literature is sufficient proof of this. In the course of generations differences in readings cropped up, and particular schools and redactions of works died out for one reason and another; but these changes did not affect the substantial accuracy of what was actually preserved and handed down. It seems therefore only proper to accept the colophons to the poems which have reached us through the same channels as the poems themselves as of equal authenticity with the poems to which they are attached, unless, indeed, it is proved on substantial grounds that the colophons were the inventions of a much later age, the correct tradition having died out long before.

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∗ See Mr. P. T. Srinivasa Aiyangar, *History of the Tamils* p.

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¹⁵⁸ In his footnote he refers his readers to his Tamil work on the Pallavas where, it may be noted, he asserts that the Pāṇḍya charters contain nothing about the Śaṅgam.

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∗ See Pandit Svaminatha Aiyar's remarks in his Preface.

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In trying to establish the unreliable character of the colophons to the Puram, Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar permits himself to make so many contradictory statements that it is not easy to understand his real position on questions of vital importance to the discussion. Let us first bring together his statements about the chronology of the colophons and see how they fare in relation to one another. In a somewhat rhetorical rebuke he administers to modern Tamil scholarship, he says: * “It is high time that scholars gave up confounding the texts of poems with the commentaries of probably a thousand years later”, and he makes it clear on the same page that, in his opinion, the colophons and the commentaries were composed probably between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. From this we may conclude that the original composition of the poems has to be ascribed to a period between the second and the sixth centuries. But then we are told that “the four anthologies were made up in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.” and that, at that time, “for each ode was noted the name of the tinai (and perhaps turai) to which it belonged and the name of its author.” So that, on the author’s own showing, no great interval elapsed between the original composition of the poems and their collection in anthologies—a result which in itself would go far to establish the authenticity of the tradition relating to the poems. This result is by no means so clear-cut, because elsewhere Mr.

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Srinivasa Aiyangar says * that Perundēvaṇār, a poet of the ninth century A. D. " seems to have taken a great interest in the collections of the poems of an earlier age, for he has provided introductory odes in praise of Śiva " to some of these collections. In the author's Tamil book on the Pallavas he states more definitely that Perundēvaṇār of the ninth century made the anthologies and provided them with introductory verses. Then again, it is not clear whether the colophons of the Puram are held to be all of them absolutely unreliable and useless for historical purposes, or whether only some of them are suspect for certain specific reasons, or whether, lastly, because some are demonstrably false, the rest have, for that reason, to be rejected. "The Puram as we have it," contends Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar, "has besides,† (1) colophons indicating the particular occasions when each of the first two hundred and sixty-six odes were sung, (2) paraphrases of these two hundred and sixty-six odes and brief notes grammatical or interpretive (sic). The colophons stop where the paraphrases stop and probably both were done by an editor of the age when commentaries were composed on old Tamil poems, i. e., probably between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.

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The colophons, and not the commentaries, are resumed with the three hundred and fifty ninth ode and are continued to the end." Once more the errors in the statement of facts in this passage are not only considerable in themselves, but are such as to lend strong support to the hypothesis that the colophons and the paraphrases of the first part of the collection belong to one late author. The facts as stated in the passage just quoted are: (1) the colophons and the paraphrases stop at the 266th ode, and (2) the colophons, not the commentaries, are resumed with the 359th ode and are continued to the end. The necessary implication is that there are no colophons to poems numbering 267 to 358 inclusive. Now this is simply not correct; because Nos. 315, 344-5 have colophons like the other poems, and on Nos. 361-3 and some other verses we have no more information than we get on the odes that are said to have no colophons (Nos. 267 to 358). In reality, the colophons were furnished for all the odes and, as already stated it is only the decayed state of the manuscripts that is responsible for the gaps in our knowledge. This is sufficiently indicated by the learned editor of the work in his preface. Further, it is conceivable that the tiṇai and tuṟai were sometimes inserted later, because this can be done by any one who knows the rules of grammar and has before him particular poems and their contexts;

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but it is inconceivable that these contexts themselves, without which the tiṇai and tuṟai could not even be guessed at in several instances, were the inventions of an age much later than that to which the poems belonged. It is necessary at this point to quote (in translation) the remarks on the state of the manuscripts made by Paṇḍit V. Svāminātha Aiyar in his preface to the first edition, as these are best calculated to place the commentary and the colophons in a proper light. He says: “In this commentary are to be found many words that are not in current use. Further, here and there a few sentences seem to have been misplaced. As there are no means at present available to make necessary alterations and as I hope later to be able to do so when better manuscripts become available, I have published them exactly as I found them in the manuscripts. This commentary is extant only for the first 266 poems of this work; in no manuscript is found the commentary for the remaining poems; and after poem No. 242 the commentary has suffered damage and is somewhat confused. We do not know who wrote this commentary. The discussions of this author in his special notes on some poems indicate the existence of an older gloss on this work which has not come down to us.

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∗ op. cit. p. 410.

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∗ op. cit. p, 159.

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† i.e., besides the tinai, turai and the name of the author op. cit. p, 410.

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"The manuscripts of the text of the poems (which did not contain the commentary), besides exhibiting several variations due to the excess or shortage of letters and words and many confused transpositions, did not contain the tinai after some poems, the tuṛai after others, and both after yet others; the names of the composers had got damaged after some poems, and these of the subjects of the poems after others, and in some other instances the names of both had disappeared." This description of the manuscripts by the great scholar who spent so many years in collating them should give the quietus to all baseless conjectures on the colophons and their relation to the extant commentary.

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"It is evident," says Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar,* "that some of the colophons appended to the poems by the editor do not embody tradition but contain guesses, sometimes wild." Our examination of the value of the Puram Four Hundred as a source of history would not be complete without a consideration of the cases adduced by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar in support of his statement just quoted. His first instance emerges from a comparison of songs numbered 76 and 77, both said to be compositions of a single poet, Iḍaikkuṉṟūr Kiḻār, on the same hero, the Pāṇḍya Neḍuñjeḷiya who was victor at Talaiyālaṅkāṉam. He says: "It is imposssible to believe that the hero victor of Talaiyālaṅkāṉam, known to the poet (76) and the boy-hero, unknown to the poet (77) were one and the same person." But was the boy-hero unknown to the poet? The operative part of the text of *Puram* 77 is:

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∗ op. cit. page 410.

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"neḍuṅdērk-koḍinji poliya niṉṟōṉ
yār-kol vāḻka-vavan kaṇṇi "

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which is translated by Mr. Aiyangar thus: "He stands so as to adorn the carved post of the chariot; whoever he may be, may his garland not fade for a long time." A more literal rendering would be: "Who verily is it that stands so as to adorn the carved post of the chariot? May his garland flourish!" Far from being ignorant of the identity of the boy-king, the poet is sure that there is only one answer to his question. Further if amidst the many uncertainties of the literature of the Śaṅgam, there is one fact established beyond all doubt, it is that the hero of Talaiyālaṅkāṉam was a little boy whose youth tempted the cupidity of his neighbours.* And this raises a strong presumption of the identity of the persons to whom *Puram* 76 and 77 refer; and what can be more natural than that an admiring poet should, as he does in *Puram* 77, exaggerate the youth of his hero in celebrating his victory and sing of him as a tender child who, despite his youth, worked wonders on the field of battle? The next instance adduced is *Puram* 74, which is said to have been composed in a Cōḻa prison, by a Cēra king amazed at his own pusillanimity in seeking water of his jailors to quench his thirst. The colophon says that the prisoner did not drink the water he got, and describes his act in the words: "uṇṇāṉ sollittuṉjiya pāṭṭu" which might mean that without drinking the water, he uttered the lines and died. This is the meaning accepted by Mr.

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Srinivasa Aiyangar who draws attention to a contradictory tradition related in the Tamil-nāvalar-caritai which says that this ode was composed by the king and despatched to his poet-friend Poygaiyār who thereupon sang the 'Kaḷavaḻi Forty' and obtained his release. "The fact that the two legends contradict each other shows," we are assured* "that supposed traditions which Tamil scholars regard as sacrosanct are but brittle reeds to lean upon in historical investigation." The first thing to observe in this connection is that the Tamil-Nāvalar-Caritai is, as Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar admits, a demonstrably late work of the sixteenth century A. D.† and some regard must be had to this in pitting its traditions against those in the colophons of the Puraṉāṉūṟu. Further, in this particular instance, the note in the Caritai leaves altogether unexplained the reference to drinking water that occurs in the text of the poem. The suggestion has been made‡ that the Cēra for whose release the Kaḷavaḻi was composed by Poygai was some king other than the author of Puṟam 74. But it is not possible to accept this, because Śeṅgaṇāṉ, the Cōḻa king is expressly mentioned both in the colophon of the Puṟam song and that of the Kaḷavaḻi as the Cēra Irumporai's foe; and the Kaḷavaḻi celebrates Śeṅgaṇāṉ's victory.

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The real solution is that offered by Paṇḍit Svāminātha Aiyar himself;¶ we should understand the word ‘tunjiya’ in the colophon not in the sense ‘died,’ but in the not less usual meaning ‘slept’ or ‘swooned.’ The note in the Nāvalar-caritai which says that the song was despatched to Poygaiyār seems hardly trustworthy; because the poet should, even without such a reminder to him, have known of his king’s fate. The other discrepancies * between the notes in the Caritai and the colophon of Puṟam 74 are too inconsiderable to affect the authenticity of the latter. Again, two objections are urged by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar against the colophon to Puṟam 47. It says that by this song Kōvūr Kiḻār saved a fellow poet from being put to death as a spy by Neḍuṅgiḷḷi who died at Kāriyāṟu. First “there is nothing in the poem remotely suggesting a spy;” secondly, “Kōvūr Kiḻār was a favourite of the enemies of Neḍuṅgiḷḷi i.e., Nalaṅgiḷḷi and Kiḷḷi Vaḷavaṉ, and therefore not likely to have any influence with Neḍuṅgiḷḷi.” Neither of these objections is sound. The first objection is easily met. The translation of the poem given by Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar himself clearly suggests the idea of espionage, or at any rate, of some means of injuring persons. It is this: “The life of these seekers of patronage is free from the blame of harming others.” This in fact is the main argument of the piece and the original is very vigorous:

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∗ cf. *Puram* 72 and the present writer's *The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom* pp. 27-8

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∗ History of the Tamils p. 414. † See Preface to T. Kanakasundaram Pillai's Edn. of the Caritai p. XII. ‡ op. cit. p.

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⁵⁸ Also Kaḷavaḻi Edn. by N. M. Veṅkaṭasami Nattar, Preface pp 4-5. ¶ Saṅgattam iḻum Piṟkālattam iḻum p, 94. He is followed by Pandit Anantarama Aiyar in his edition of the Kaḷavaḻi, Preface p, 12 & n.

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ippariśil vāḻkkai
piṟarkku-ttiḍariṉaṉṟō-viṉṟē.

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The second objection stated above also overlooks the argument of the poet, that poets of his kind moved freely from one prince to another not taking account of their political relations, and that it would be wrong to suspect a poet who visited him simply because he had last left the court of a political rival. Further, by saying that Kōvūr Kiḷār was the favourite of the enemies of Neḍuṅgiḷḷi viz., Naḷaṅgiḷḷi and Kiḷḷivaḷavaṉ, Mr. Aiyangar identifies Neḍuṅgiḷḷi who died at Kāriyāru with Neḍuṅgiḷḷi who was besieged at Uraiyūr by Naḷaṅgiḷḷi. If this identification is correct, as most probably it is, then it would transpire that Kōvūr Kiḷār was as much friends with Neḍuṅgiḷḷi as with his foes; for *Puram* Nos. 44 and 45 are by Kōvūr Kiḷār and on Neḍuṅgiḷḷi. In fact this poet's successful efforts in the promotion of peace and mutual good will among the pugnacious princelings of his time come in for special notice and appreciation by Dr. G. U. Pope.* Lastly, about *Puram* 173 Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar remarks: "It is impossible to regard this ode but as the song of a hungry bard in search of a patron; yet it is attributed to a royal personage by the editor of the *Puram*." This objection seems at first sight to be indeed well-taken. But Paṇṇaṉ is mentioned together with Kiḷḷivaḷavaṉ by Kōvūr Kiḷār in *Puram* 70, and consequently there is no intrinsic difficulty in accepting that Kiḷḷivaḷavaṉ who died at Kuḷamurram and Paṇṇaṉ were contemporaries and that the king might conceivably have composed a song on his friend Paṇṇaṉ. Though the subject-matter of *Puram* 173 seems hardly suited to such a composition, its explanation may be that the poem is conceived as the utterance of a bard, as suggested in all the alternative interpretations given in its commentary.† Let us grant, however, that a real incongruity may have arisen by a wrong poem or colophon having been substituted for the right one at this point. And a close scrutiny may reveal some other instances of a similar character. But it is grossly to exaggerate the issue to say, as Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar does, that " many more such colophons can easily be found in the anthology" (italics mine). We can hardly expect that in the course of long centuries the anthologies have been transmitted to us without errors in details having crept in. But, for this reason, to cast a doubt on the accuracy of whole groups of poems and their colophons and to reject them wholesale is to apply standards of criticism which would render all historical writing impossible. As is only to be expected in such a case, the practice of writers is often better than would result from a rigid application of the principles enunciated by them, and Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar himself has made far more use of the Puram Four Hundred than would be proper if he held fast to the criticisms urged by him against the credibility of the poems and the traditions relating to them as found in the colophons. In the next study on Karikāla will be found instances of colophons fully borne out by the texts of poems in different anthologies, sufficient proof that the colophons embody genuine history.

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∗ They are: the mention of the ‘east gate’ instead of the ‘west gate’ and the number of the poem, given as 158 in the Caritai.

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∗ *I. A.* XXIX p 255.

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† A comparison of this poem with *Puram* Nos. 270 and 312, especially the former, is very instructive on this point.

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It is also necessary to observe, before closing, that the question of the authenticity of the colophons which has engaged our attention so far, is different from that of the internal chronology of the poems that results from our accepting them. It is indeed true that hasty genealogical lists have been evolved for the dynasties represented in the poems; these lists lack support from the colophons and Mr. Srinivasa Aiyangar does well to deprecate them. But their shortcomings leave untouched the main question of the authority and correctness for purposes of history of the literary tradition we have been discussing. The method of working in data drawn from it in a restoration of the past, and the pattern resulting from their disposition offer limitless scope to the talent of the individual historian.

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