Studies in Cola History and Administration c7.181

c7.181

That in Indian conditions history had too often a tendency to degenerate quickly into mythology is a fact generally admitted and easy to demonstrate. The history of Ekāntaḍa Rāmayya * in the twelfth century A. D. is a case from relatively modern times. Karikāla is an ancient name and legend has played upon it for a very long time. It began its work early as we see from the Śilappadikāram. Whatever might have happened after his time, there is no trustworthy evidence to show that Karikāla ruled at Kāñcī at all. That Kāñcīpuram was an important place in Karikāla's time is clear from the Perumbāṇārruppaḍai; and the Maṇimēkalai seems to imply that sometime after Karikāla the city passed under the sway of the Cōḷas. But of the Pallavas of the Prakrit and Sanskrit charters we have no mention in early Tamil literature, and the idea of a Cōḷa interregnum in Kāñcī in the midst of Pallava rule appears to rest entirely on the Trilōcana myth and the date postulated for Karikāla thereupon. Karikāla's connection with Kāñcī in legend would appear to have arisen partly from the great celebrity of Kāñcī from very early times, and partly from the presumption that so powerful a king as Karikāla must in his time have held Kāñcī as well. Further, Trilōcana Pallava having been made the opponent of Karikāla, what was more natural than that the city which was most associated with Pallava rule in the minds of the people should have fallen to Karikāla after his conquest of Triṇētra? Indeed, in considering this question, the possibility has often presented itself to my mind that there, after all, may have existed another Karikāla different from the king of the *Paṭṭiṉappālai*, who held Kāñcī and raised the banks of the Kāvēri, and who in later times came to be confounded with his earlier namesake; but every time, the insubstantial nature of the evidence on which these facts relating to Kāñcī and Kāvēri rest, and the utter impossibility of reconciling such an assumption with the trend of general history so far as it is known at present, have resulted in the idea of a second Karikāla being dismissed as untenable.