Studies in Cola History and Administration c7.175

c7.175

The earliest mention of Karikāla’s embankment of the Kāvēri seems to be that in the Mālēpāḍu plates of Puṇyakumāra and there, as we have seen, Triṇētra is not heard of. The Bedirūr grant, of the Gaṅga king Bhūvikrama of A. D. 634 † also mentions the embankment, but not Triṇētra. Still the fact is not easy to explain, that if Karikāla who attained the *trairājyasthiti* and controlled the flood-banks of the Kāvēri in some wonderful manner not stated (Mālēpāḍu plates) were the same king as is celebrated in Śaṅgam literature, that literature should not betray the slightest trace of a knowledge of such a thing on the part of any of the authors mentioning Karikāla. Old stanzas indeed, waifs and strays coming from nobody knows where, do contain such allusions;* but they can hardly be accepted as evidence of anything historical. The mention of the event in the early Telugu-Cōḍa plates from Mālēpāḍu and in the Tamil Cōḷa plates of the Vijayālaya line, and the absence of all mention of Triṇētra in these grants, may suggest that this particular statement is entitled to greater credence than the somewhat later jingle caraṇasarōruha etc. And the trairājyasthiti of Karikāla (Mālēpāḍu) which seems to coincide with what we hear in Tamil literature of his victories against the Cēra and the Pāṇḍya is perhaps another consideration pointing to the same conclusion. On the other hand, the Mālēpāḍu plates do not tell us precisely how Karikāla controlled the floods of the Kāvēri; they seem to count this achievement as the first of a series of miracles (anekātiśaya) which are not detailed. And the story grows first into an embankment of the Kāvēri, then into an embankment raised by the hands of the defeated enemies of Karikāla, and lastly, when this stream of legend mingles with another started by the craze for Triṇētra, into the elaborate form in which it gets standardized in the caraṇasarōruha formula and the Kalingattuparani verse. On the whole it seems therefore best to treat the construction of the banks of the Kāvēri as a Karikāla myth rather than accept it as history. A Tamil inscription † of the twelfth century or so mentions a Parakēsari Karikāla-cōḷadēva who raised the banks of the Kāvēri.