________________
No. 8.]
THE KALPATTI STONE INSCRIPTION.
of what may have been the foundations of houses. The number of houses may therefore at that time have been 240. Tradition is silent as to the date. The only chronological fact we are certain about is the date of the existing image in the village. On the pedestal of that image is an inscription in Grantha characters, which I read as follows; Sadyah so vai Dharmaraja Bhagavatur. The first words denote the Kali year 4717, and the last two apparently the name of the donor of the image. What is important just now is the fact that the liability to pay the annual panam, which originally may have been personal-confined to the donees and their descendants-, has become territorial. The builder of a new house has the obligation, whether he builds on a vacant site or on a portion of an existing house site. Nay, a sub-division of houses entails the payment of the panam on every one of those who own the various parts. In these ways the corporate life of the village was by the application of a legal fiction established on a territorial basis. Similar arrangements are in vogue in other villages also. The terms of our inscription manaiyil kotutta panam bear out the traditional accounts of the origin of the institution.
Kōvilkkolla should properly be written kovilukkulla (belonging to the temple' or 'intended for the temple'). This is not a mistake of the scribe, but the usual way of writing. In all the Vaṭṭeluttu records which I have yet examined1 I find evidence of the same peculiarity.
147
Taratettam is certainly a corruption of the Sanskrit word dhäradattam ('gift with water'). On Vijayanagara inscriptions we read Sa-hiranya-payodhara-purvakam dattavan.' The term under reference is only a summary of this long expression.
Marumakan and anantiruvar.-The former means nephew' or son-in-law.' Itti-Kkombi stood in that relation to the then Raja of Palghat. Or it may be merely an honorific or affectionate term for a younger member of the family. It must be mentioned here that the Palghat Rājās have the Marumakkattayam3 law of inheritance.
Anantiruvan means "a junior member." It here probably refers to the next junior member of the Kōnikkaleḍam branch of the Palghat Raja's family, Itți-Kkombi being its most elderly member. The word karanavar (1. 30) means the eldest member of the family.
Tükshikkakkaṭavar should be sukshikkakkadavar (bound to look after '). Such substitution of t for s is common in Tamil: thus the Sanskrit word masam becomes in Tamil madam. So in Malayalam Tāmuri is a variant form of Samuri (Zamorin).*
Mukkalvaṭṭangal.-This word, or a variant form of it-mukkalvaṭṭam-is a peculiar term occurring in Vaṭṭeluttu inscriptions. Since it is as important as difficult to render, it is necessary to discuss its meaning in detail.
Dr. Gundert in his Malayalam Dictionary translates the word by "a Bhagavati temple." Mr. Logan in his "Malabar Manual "5 gives a translation of what appears to be our inscription, and renders the word in question by "the oracles of Velichappadu." These "moving oracles" of Malabar (Velichappäḍu) have a circular seat supported on three legs-hence known as mukkalvatṭam (mu='three,' kal='leg,' vattam='circalar seat '), and are attached to a temple of some Bhagavati (goddess). But this meaning, if possible, is distinctly inapplicable to the context here. Mukkalvaṭṭangal would be the plural of mukkalvaṭṭam, and we are not aware of the Velichappaḍu having several seats. Further, we are now dealing with the particulars relating to a Siva temple, not a Bhagavati temple.
Ep. Ind., Vol. XIII, No. 8.
E.g. Ep. Ind., Vol. IX, p. 238.
Succession being from maternal uncle to nephew or cousin.
* For the derivation of this word see my History of the Zamorins (Palghat, 1904), p. 5. Vol. III, Document 8.
T 2
