Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.19
Studies in Cōḻa History and Administration c6.19
- Language
- English
c6.19.1
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.
c6.19.2
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.
c6.19.3
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.
c6.19.4
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.