recently read "neengalum mudhalvaraagalaam" translated into tamil by Ra.ki. Rangarajan from the english moolam "48 laws of power".
He mentions the following episode....
Kuruschev addressess the gathering listing out all the atrocities / crimes committed by his predecessor. Somebody from the crowd suddenly shouts why kuruschev was keeping quiet when the atrocities were committed inspite of being in the ministry..
Kuruschev retors in a stern voice by asking "who is this?" ... There is pin drop silence in the gathering.. the person who asked the questio dare not open his mouth.....
Kuruschev says .. this is the prime reason why even he did not voice when atrocities were committed.. implied meaning is that had kuruschev spoken out, he would have been killed ....
kitta thatta adhey maadhiri dhaan sir ellaamey..... nobody would dare to voice any opinion against the king...that too a king who is all poweful.... praise the king and get all favours would have been the order of the day.. even today it is the same
iam not saying RRC commmited atrocities.. with due respects to him let me also submit that there might have been a lot of addenddum to his deeds ....
people might say that had he been glorified for the deeds which he has not done, somebody during the later times wud have exposed.. the problem is that after RRc there was rajendra cholan.... anybody who wud have tried to malign RRC would have been clearly executed ... in Rajedra's own style...
After a period RRc wud have been easily forgotten and now ressurected..
remember somewhere reading that prior to kalki's sivakamiyin sabatham .. people said taht all the monuments in Mahabalipuram was built by some ET's (extra terrestrials .. not Economic Times)... andha maadhiri when pallava's cud have been easily forgotten. cholas too wud have been easily forgotten....
Hi a thousand years back was a cruel era. a soft king would have been relegated to the dustbin.kalki's level of softening rrc's charecter is a little too much. should be read with poetic licence in mind. especially saving the kuruvikkuudu from falling into the floods.
it was a time when either you were tough or you werent existent. uthama sola survived because rrc was the tough man next to him. after uthama I think rrc has the least battles per years ruled ratio.
so he may have been portrayed as soft ,kind and just.rrc could have afforded to be soft because he had a tough son at hand.
till then a kings glory was on battles won. but then the trend changed with uthama. those who built temples also were deemed glorious. I think the other face of cholas was seen with the onset of uthamas rule.
even today it is a cruel era.... right from dasaradha maharaja era it is cruel only...
had dasaratha maharaja been soft, demons wud have easily overpowered him...
why dasaradha mahraja.... cruel era started right from Lord Muruga's era.. to my knowledge one of the eraliest tyrants was soorapanman...vrittaasuran and other previous asurans not witstanding.... maarupadu sooranai vadhaippadharkaaga vandhavan murugan.... but anyway Muruga taking sooran as his vaahanam is a different line altogether... coz he is lord .. not a mortal..
a king cannot be soft anyday.. as u said somebody has to be there to compensate for softness.
There is a legend in one of the verses of Ramayana that "the same story/happenings of Ramayana is getting repeated in every cycle of yuga (like dwabara, kali etc.,) and there is no proof that how many times this has been repeated".
I think this is possible only with Time as Fourth Dimension. (Close to Einstein's Theory of Relativity). Lord Muruga as a small kid appears before Avvaiyaar and asking Sutta pazham vendumaa, sudaatha pazham vendumaa (and the same avvaiyaar is believed to be instrumental as peacemaker during adhiyamaan's period). One more twist is that Avvaiyaar is not a single character in history and it is the conglomeration of many avvaiyaars..
Hence, they say "kanndavar vinndilar; vinndavar kanndilar"....