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No. 45.)
YOUR PANDYA RECORDS FROM UKKIRANKOTTAI.
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No. 45.-FOUR PANDYA RECORDS FROM UKKIRANKOTTAI.
By A. S. RAMANATHA AYYAR, B.A., MADRAS. The subjoined Pandya records' come from Ukkiranköttai, a village in the Tinnevelly taluk of the Tinnevelly District. Three of them are in the Tamil language and are engraved in Vatteluttu characters assignable to the 10th century A.D., while the fourth in Sanskrit is in Grantha characters of the same period. There are no new points worth mentioning about the graphic peculiarities of these Vatteluttu and Grantha scripts, as they are of the usual variety employed in other contemporaneous records of the locality.
Record A is dated in the 13th year opposite to the 2nd year of reign of the Pandya king Sadaiya Märan and registers a gift of sheep by a lady named Tudaruri, wife of Tennavan Pallavadižraiyaq alias Māran -Suran for maintaining a perpetual lamp in the temple of god Aditya-Bhatāra: at the eastern entrance of Karavandapuram in Kaļakkudi-nāļu. Record B is a Sanskrit version of the same endowment made by Tudarüri, here called the wife of Srikantha. Sura to the temple of god Vikarttana at Karavandapura, but the king's name is not mentioned in it. Record C was originally engraved on a broad slab of stone, which has been cut longitudinally into two and planted in the temple compound to serve as gate-posts, and in the process, its first line containing the king's name has suffered mutilation. But the regnal year quoted for the king, viz., 2+9, as well as the fact that the same Tennavan Pallavadiäraiyan alias Kandan (Srikantha)Sügan is herein mentioned as being in charge of Kalakkuļi (Kaļakkudi mahānāyakam seyya perra) help us to attribute this inscription also to the Sadaiya-Māran of record A. Further, as it is stated that this Pallavadišraiyan erected an ambalam (wayside choultry) called 'Nagarattan in the name of the trading guild (Nagarattar) of the colony called Rajasinga-ppėrangādi, newly founded by him, apparently in the name of his sovereign, the Sadaiya-Māraş of these records can be identified with Rājasimha III, who is already well-known from the Sinnamanür plates issued in the 2+14th year of his reign, and to whose period the characters employed in all these epigraphs can very appropriately belong. Record D, though it does not mention any king's name, can, palæographically, be attributed to the same king's reign.
The village now known by the name of Ukkirankottai has been called Karavandapuram in Kalakkudi_nādu in A, while in D it is simply called Kaļakkudi. Karavandapuram alias Kalakkudis (and Kalandai) 'has been mentioned as the birth-place of Māran-Käri, the excavator of the rock-cut shrine of Narasimha at Anaimalai in the Madura District, and of his brother Maran-Eyinan, both of whom successively held the office of Uttaramantri under the Pandya ruler Marañ-Sadaiyan, and also that of Sattan-Ganavadi, the king's Mahäsämanta, and it was
1 Nos. 194, 195 196 and 199 of 1935-36 of the Madras Epigraphical collection. 1 The first part of the name . Maran' is based on the name of the reigning Pandya king.
• The temple in which this record is found is now called the Chokkalinga temple and a linga is installed in ita central shrine. It was probably temple dedicated exclusively to Sarya in earlier days. But as the people in the locality say that the present temple was built from stones brought from the adjoining fields, it is also possible that the temple of Aditya-Bhatara may have existed as a separate shrine in the vicinity, and that when it fell into ruins, its stones were built into the present shrine. In this connection it has to be remembered that inside a fort, a Siva temple should be constructed in the north-east, and that of Borya in the east. (Gopi. nath Rao, El. of Hindu Iconography, Vol. I, p. 22.)
• South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. III, p. 444.
* Above, Vol. VIII, p. 319 and Vol. XVII, p. 303. The name Kalandai mentioned as the native place of Mārti-Eyipap, appears to be only a poetie form of the word Kalakkudi (Ind. Ant., Vol. XXII, p. 71 and above, Vol. XVII, p. 296).
• Ind. Ant., Vol. XXII, p. 67, wherein is quoted No. 37 of 1908.
