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No. 47] TIRUVORRIYUR INSCRIPTION OF CHATURANANA PANDITA
293 Our inseription gives in broad outlines the full career of this general of Rājāditya. The first verse of the inscription describes the nativity of the general; and it is therefore unfortunate that parts of the first half of this verse are lost. From what has been left it is clear that the general was called Valabha and he was the son of Rājasēkhara, the chief of Vallabharashtra. This Rājaśēkhara, it is also clear, stood in some relation, as a subordinate or general to the lord of Kērala (Kéraļīnām nāthasya ..... . ...). Vaļabha became a scholar even as a boy, was valorous and was seized with an enthusiasm to go forth and be of service to the world. It was the time when the Chõla king, Parantaka I, had married a Kērala princess and this intimate alliance had led a number of Kerala warriors to seek the Chõļa country for service under the Choļa king and his son. Valabha, as one of these, reached the Chõļa country and became greatly attached to Rājāditya, who, though the inscription calls him Rājan, was at this time, a Viceroy under his father Parāntaka I. Valabha rose to the position of a general under Rājāditya, but when the latter was attacked by the Rashtrakūtas at Takkõlam, Vaļabha was not by his side. He would have desired to lay down his life for his master or with him, but fate willed otherwise, and he was stricken with deep grief for his absence and failure to die with his master which were unworthy of himself, his family and his master. He therefore renounced worldly life and went to the Ganges. Having bathed in the celestial river, he wandered back to the south and reached Tiruvorriyūr which was famous for its religious and spiritual associations. There he entered a cave called after Niranjanaguru, the head of affairs at Tiruvorriyür. He attained spiritual enlightenment there and omerged as a siddha. Gradually the cave rose to importance and was converted into a regular matha. Assuming the spiritual name Chaturānana Pandita, the ex-general Valabha began to administer this matha, as also the affairs of the temple. Thus did position and authority, which he had once renounced, come back to him, he succeeded to the important place previously held by Niranjanaguru as the head of affairs at Tiruvorriyūr, and it is as the head of his own malha, that our general, now Chaturanana Pandita, made an endowment which was the occasion for setting up this inscription.
The Tamil part of the inscription which follows mentions the 20th year of the reign of) Kannaradēva, the victor over Kāñchi and Tanjore, and says that Tiruvorriyür was in the division called Pular-kõttam; and adds that, for the purpose of the conduct of worship on every Avittam, his natal constellation, Chaturānana Pandita Bhatāra of the matha, gave to the Lord an endowment. The actual mention of the gift is lost and the major part of the epigraph in the Tamil portion is taken up by an enumeration of the details of articles and persons required for the service.
It is possible to reconstruct the full civil name of Chaturanana Pandita from a close interpre. tation of the first verse. The verse calls him Valabha and son of the chief of Vallabharashtra : therefore Valabha seems to be only a form of Vallabha, which is the name taken after his Rāshtra. His father is called Rājasēkhara which means also, by double entendre, Siva (the moon-crested god); and Valabba is said to have been born to Rājasekhara, even as Guha to Rajasēkhara, i. e., Siva. The completion of the rhetoric here requires that Valabha also had a personal name meaning Guba or Subrahmanya, and that was, in all probability, Kumāra.
1 See An. Rep. of the A.S.1., 1905-6, p. 181. Venkayya says that several of the Tirunāmanallur inscriptions mention natives of Malabar among the servants of Rājāditya, and given in the footnote the..ames of six such Mala. yāļis. See also, .1.., Vol. II, p. 386, verso 8; and K. A. N. Sastri : Colas, I, pp. 162-3 According to Venkayya (loc. cit. p. 182) Rajaditya's mother Kökkiläpadligal was the Kerala princess married by Parantaka I (sce also A. R. on S. I. E. 1912, p. 56), but according to Prof. Nilakanta Sastri (Colay, I, p. 162), it was Ariðjaya's mother who was a Kerala princess.
That is, in the cave. The word used in the text is gahna which means 'n depth', 'an inaccessiblo place' Seo Vāchaspatya and Apte. It has thus been taken in the sense of cave.
• The village of Pulai or Polal is about loven miles to the west of Tiruvorriyur in the Chingloput District.
