Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.19.3

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.