Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.14

c6.14

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.