Studies in Cola History and Administration c6.23.3

c6.23.3

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;