The paper aims to explore the link between the growth of trade and urban centres and changes in the structure of the state. In other words, how the emerging traders and merchants’ network affected or altered the state’s structure during the Cola period in the view of south Indian scholarships such as R. Champakalakshmi, Meera Abraham, James Heitzmen and Kenneth Hall. All of these studies focus upon the socio-economic and political formation of the so-called golden, imperial and monarchical state of the Cola. The time-frame of the present discussion also would be the Cola period, i.e. circa between 9th to 13th centuries A.D. The study of imperial Colas must rely heavily upon the records of pious benefactions inscribed upon the walls of temples, and thus they remain as primary references to study the beneficial relationship between the state and urban and commercial growth during the pre-modern South India.