Studies in Cola History and Administration c7.101

c7.101

The statements that Karikāla found himself a fugitive at Karūr after the death of his father and grandfather, and that he was fetched from there by the state elephant from Kaḷumalam[†] to ascend the Cōḷa throne, rest solely on the authority of the commentary to Paḷamoḷi No. 230 (VI b). The Paḷamoḷi, though it figures in the traditional lists of the eighteen minor anthologies of Śaṅgam poetry, is, like some others in that group, a work of uncertain age; and its commentary must, in any case, be a late work which can hardly be accepted in the absence of any satisfactory evidence to that effect, as a reliable authority on the events of the reign of Karikāla. Moreover, the choice of a king at critical times by the people setting an elephant at large and trusting to its sagacity, is too common a motif in legends * for us to accept it as a historical fact relating to any particular king. On this view, there is nothing in favour of the supposition that Karikāla was imprisoned at Karūr; in fact, there is no hint in the *Paḻamoḻi* of a man being taken out from a prison in Karūr for being put upon the Cōḻa throne. On the other hand, the *Paṭṭiṉappālai*, while it does not disclose the identity of the enemies of Karikāla's youth, makes it clear that Karikāla not only escaped from the prison, but attained the throne by his own exertions, and in this account there is no room for the elephant story.