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Aeneid of Kamba Ramayanam. Prof. Nilakanta Sastri's monumental work on the Colas is there. But for one thing it is in English, a language still unknown to many a Tamilian. And for another the Tamil Department which was fortunate enough to have in its midst Tiru. T. V. Sadasiva Pandarattar, a ripe Tamil scholar who has made a life-long study of the Tamil Inscriptions, felt that a few new points of view could be presented even in this study of Cola history. Therefore the present book on the “Later Colas" came to be written by Tiru. Pandarattar in Tamil. It is very unfortunate that the last portion of this work on the culture of the Cola Age has been postponed to a later date. As a Tamil scholar Tiru, Pandarattar is most qualified to write on that subject and I personally know of the importance of his contribution in that field. We may yet hope that he may complete that last volume before he becomes very old.
The learned author has emphasized certain facts in this work and it is my duty to draw pointed attention to them. In those years, I proposed to discuss these facts separately at some great length in English, for getting the benefit of criticism from a wider world of Research. But unfortunately there was time only for preparing one paper on “Palaiyaru," which was read before the Indian Historical Congress at its session at Annamalainagar. In the present book, the importance of Palaiyaru as the capital of the Colas during the VII and VIII centuries and as the second capital of the Colas during the subsequent centuries, is well brought out, along with its present condition. Our author belongs as it were to Palaiyaru and its vicinity and therefore gives important and interesting local informations of historical value about Palaiyaru, about Tiruppurambiyam, its historical relics, its tomb temple on the remains of the Ganga King Pritivipati I who died there on that battle-field along with a Pallava King, its temple built in 'stone by Aditta, the victor of that battle-field, and about Tirailoki, its historical relics confirming Rajendra I's victorious march into Bengal.
The author has at some length dealt with the inter-relationship of the Cola marital alliances with the Cola foreign policy which reminds us of the old European foreign policies bringing about marital alliances. The marriage of Ilango Picci, the daughter
