Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎495v] (115/238)

328 The Age of Mdnikka Vdfagar
Now we find that about ten years after the date of
Rdmdnuja’s flight to the court of the King, whom he
converted, there was a Chola King, named Kulatonga
Chdla II. (1127), whose father, Kulatonga I.,* (1064 to
1127) had a general named Karundkara, with the Princely
title of Tondaim&n. There was also, as we have seen, a
Karikdla Chola, from whose persecutions Ramanuja fled.
At the period to which the so-called third Sangam is
attributed, whatever it may ultimately prove to have been,
there was a poet named Rudran Kannannar, who composed
two out of the ten idylls admitted to be contemporaneous
with that period. One of the two idylls was addressed to
a Karikala Chdla, and the other to a Prince Tondaiman.
These poems, it is said, are not of an epic character, and do
not treat of the subjects of them as ancient heroes. The
poems were contemporary laudations. The epic Silappad-
hikdram, admittedly contemporaneous with the period of
the so-called third Sangam, speaks of Karikala Chola as of
that time. We have, therefore, the curious coincidence that
at the time of the so-called third Sangam there were two
Princes named Karikala Chola and Tondaiman to whom
poems were addressed, and in the period of Ramanuja there
were also two Princes of these identical names. Does not
this suggest that they were respectively the same people,
and that the Sangam and the time of Ramdnuja coincided ?
Mr. Seshagiri Sastriyar, too, I again observe, says (p. 31,
note) that Tamil literature refers to but one Karikala
Chola.
It might also be noticed that the Silappadhikaram, a
composition admittedly of the time of the third Sangam,
has a reference to the Vanni tree legend of the Saint
Jnana Sambandhar. If any weight ought to be given to
* Duff’s “Indian Chronology,” p. 128 . In 1090 a.d., Rajendra
Chola II., son of Western Chalukya Raja King raja King L, deposes Parakesari
\ arman, and seizes the Chdla crown, after which he is styled Kulatonga I.
And see Duff, p. 139, opposite 1113 a.d. as to the same and his general,
Karunakara 1 ondaiman, also Indian Antiquary, vol. xix. p. 329 , and vol. xx,