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COLAS
187
a temple on earth, view the great power of the Cēļas or the river Kāveri?' From another inscription we learn that the Cālukya king Pulakesin II crossed the river Kāverī with his victorious army to enter the Cõla country when the Kāverī had her current obstructed by the causeway formed by his elephants'. The glory of the Kāverī forms an inexhaustible theme of early Tamil poetry. According to the Manimēkhalai," this noble stream was released from his waterpot by the sage Agastya in response to the prayer of the king Kānta and for the exaltation of the children of the sun'. She was the special banner of the just race of the Cõļas, and she never failed them in the most protracted drought. The yearly freshes in the Kāveri formed the occasion of a carnival in which the whole nation from the king down to the meanest peasant took part.2 The origin of the name Cõļa is uncertain. The Parimēlalagar is inclined to make it the name, like Pāņdya and Cēra, of a ruling family or clan of antiquity. The story of the eponymous brothers Cēran, Sõlan and Pāņdiyan is indeed suggestive. The name Coļa, however, indicated from the earliest times the people as well as the country subject to the Cola dynasty of rulers. Col. Gerini wrongly connects the word Cola with the Sanskrit Kāla (black) and with Kõla which denoted in the early days the black or dark coloured pre-Aryan population of Southern India in general. The effort to derive it similarly from Tamil 'Colam' (millet) or Sanskrit 'Cora' (thief) seems unsound. Other names generally used for the Colas are Killi, Valavan and Sembiyan. Killi probably comes from Kil' (dig) meaning a' digger'; this word forms an integral part of early Cõļa names like Nedungilli and so on which is not found in later Cāļa names. Vaļavan probably comes from ‘Vaļam' (fertility), and means owner of a fertile country, like the land of the Kāverī. Sembiyan is generally taken to mean a descendant of Sibi, a legendary hero whose self-sacrifice in saving a dove from the pursuit of a falcon figures among the early Cāļa legends and forms the theme of the Sibi Jātaka among the Jātaka stories of Buddhism.3
The Cõla kings were alleged to belong to the tribe of Tiraiyar or ‘Men of the Sea'. Their connection with the sea is probably indicated by the following reference of Aelian to the realm of Soras (Chola ?) and its chief city: There is a city which a man of royal extraction called Soras governed at the time when Eukratides
erned the Bactrians, and the name of that city is Perimuda. It is inhabited by a race of fish-eaters who go off with nets and catch oysters. During the age of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,
1 I, 9-12; 23-4. 2 Manimēkhalai, p. 23.
3 Ibid., p. 25. 4 Ray Chaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India, 4th Ed., 271, f.n. 2.
