Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.23.1

c6.23.1

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.