Studies in Cola History and Administration c7.168

c7.168

The attempt to discover common ground between early Tamil literature of the Śaṅgam period and the late Telugu-Cōḍa inscriptions is thus altogether forced and unconvincing. To read some of these inscriptions with no preconceived theories to establish, is the surest means of convincing ourselves that we have in them edifying legends pitchforked into lengthy pedigrees, not quite consistent with one another, but always meant to redound to the glory of some petty chieftain or other who made some little gift. And a common feature of these legends of the Telugu country is to get their ancient king down from Ayōdhyā on a conquest, or on game hunting, often leading to an encounter with Triṇētra, another mythical and shadowy figure. That is how Triṇētra comes to be not only the opponent of Vijayāditya and Karikāla, but the friend of another prince from the North, an ancestor of Velanāṇṭi Goṅka III, by name Malla I, who had his capital orginally at Kirṇapura in the Madhyadēśa. The same form of legend in which Triṇētra figures as friend and not as foe appears to have been adopted, as Hultzsch remarks, † by the chiefs of Amarāvati who bore the title "lord of