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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXI.
No. 38. THE TIRUMUKKUDAL INSCRIPTION OF VIRARAJENDRA.
By K. V. SUBRAHMANYA AYYAR, B.A., COIMBATORE.
Of the collection of over twenty thousand inscriptions made by the Epigraphical Department in the Madras Presidency, the inscription edited here is unique in several respects. It is one of the biggest inscriptions known so far; it registers certain historical facts not known or noticed till now; it gives an insight into the details of the working of the official machinery and shows how the king's birth-day, the days of the natal star of persons of note, and festivals of public rejoicing were celebrated; it records provisions made for the maintenance of an educational institution and a hostel; above all, it furnishes detailed information, such as is available from no other source, regarding the upkeep of a hospital, the medicines stocked therein, the number of beds provided for in-patients, the endowment for a staff of nurses, physician, surgeon and compounder, and the provision for inferior servants such as the washerman, the potter and others that attended to the needs of the patients. In presenting the record, I have strictly confined myself to offering such remarks and suggestions as are required to elucidate the text.
The inscription is engraved on the east wall of the first prākāra of the Vishnu temple of Venkatesa-Perumal at Tirumukküḍal in the Madhurantakam taluk of the Chingleput district. It was discovered and copied by me during the field season of 1915-16.1 There is a notice of it in the Annual Report on Epigraphy for that year. The village of Tirumukkuḍal derives its name from its situation at the confluence of the Pälär with two of its tributaries, the Vegavati and the Cheyyar. The word 'tirumukkuḍal' means 'the confluence of three sacred (streams)'. The temple of Venkatesa-Perumal is picturesquely situated on a prominence on the bank of the combined river which at this place is naturally very broad. The spot is an ideal one for the erection of a temple, college, hostel and hospital. At the time of the record, all these were actually combined in one building with separate apartments for each section and located here as the inscription gives us to understand. Tirumukkuḍal is about two miles from Palaiya-Sivaram, a small station next to Walajabad in the Conjeeveram-Chingleput section of the South Indian Railway, and has to be reached by crossing the river. On the opposite side of the river is a small hillock on which stands another Vishnu temple which is sometimes frequented by pilgrims visiting Conjeeveram and about which there is a reference in our inscription under the name Tiruvenkatamalai.
The temple of Venkatesa-Perumal is an ancient one. It has been in existence from the time of the Pallava king Vijaya-Nripatunga-vikramavarman of the ninth century A.D. as evidenced by a record of the 24th year of his reign found on a slab supporting a beam in the inner enclosure." According to this inscription, the god is called Vishnu-Bhaṭāra. It was known by the name of Tirumukkuḍal-Alvar and Maha-Vishnu during Chōla times, while a later epigraph calls it by the
name Venkatesvara-svāmin.5
The inscription under publication consists of 55 lines of writing and is engraved in two sections. In the first section the lines are very long and run to a distance of 55 feet. The entire space covered by the inscription is 540 square feet. The record is written in the Tamil language and alphabet, and the characters belong to the latter half of the eleventh century A.D. A few Grantha letters are used mostly in words of Sanskrit origin. The inscription is fairly well preserved, though in some places a few letters are badly damaged. One or two small inscribed slabs have fallen off
Annual Report on Epigraphy for 1916, para. 4 on page 4.
2 Ibid, pp. 118f.
No. 179 of the Madras epigraphical collection for 1915.
4 Nos. 169 and 182 of the same collection.
No. 187 of the same collection.
