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No. 47] TIRUVORRIYUR INSCRIPTION OF CHATURANANA PANDITA 295 general's name, and it may well be Kumāra. Fifthly, and this is only of cumulative value, the Gramam inscriptions are in a locality over which Rājāditya was Viceroy, and it is natural that his general of the Tiruvorriyūr inscription was also in the same place.
Unfortunately, the inscriptions afford no clue to know his caste; in one of the Grāmam inscriptions, his native place is called Navägrahāra ; we do not know if we can put too much meaning into the word Agrahāra and suggest that he was a Brāhmaṇa. But the general impression left by a consideration of his life and career is clearly in favour of taking him to be of high caste.
The descriptions of the positions occupied by the general, which have been noted above, show him to have been an intimate guard of the king and a general of his chief forces. The last we hear of him as a Chola commander in the Tirumunaippādinādu is in 943 A.D.;' next, he figures at Tiruvorriyūras & Mathapati, in the eighteenth year of king Krishna III, i.e., in A.D. 957. From his second record at the latter place, i.e., the present inscription, dated in A.D. 959, we learn that his absence from the scene at Takkõlam led him to renounce worldly life. Where he was between the years 943 and 949, the date of the battle of Takkõlam, what his pre-occupation was and why he could not be by his master's side on the occasion of the fatal engagement are more than what we can say or suggest at present. But one thing is certain, viz., the alleged treachery of Chaturā. nana Pandita and his turning a spy of the Răshtrakūta king, etc.,' is, as Prof. Nilakanta Sastri says, "a most baseless conjecture." The misunderstanding was inspired not only externally by Fleet's wrong translation of the passage in the Ātakür inscription but also internally by the wrong import attached to the word Vallabha occurring in the first verse of our inscription. Vallabha refers to the general's father as the chief of Vallabha Rashtra i.e., Vaļļuva-nādu, (- --Vallabha-samāhvaya-rāshtra-nāthāt) in Kerala, and not to the Vallabha Rashtrakūta.
1 That this identification had also suggested itself to Prof. Nilakanta Sastri may be seen from his remarks "One wonders if this man (Chaturanana Pandita) was the same as the Kerala general of Räjāditya who built the Siva temple at Gramam ....." (Colas, Vol. II, Pt. I, p. 496, f.n. 71).
In his short account of Chaturanana Pandita (Colas, Vol. II, Pt. i, p. 496), Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri saya that this general' came to be closely 488ociated with king Räjāditya as his guru, friend and så manla.' The expression in the inscription Prakatatara-guru-enéha-samanta-bhavam means really that he became the general (Samanta) of king Rajāditya by virtue of his great (guru) and very transparent (prakatatara) attachment (snéha) to the king. Prof. Sastri says also that ' in spite of their proximity, (italics mine) he did not have the pleasure of dying with his friend', and in support of this is found his citation in the foot-note sannidhanat hamaranasukham. As has been pointed out while drawing attention to the peculiarities of the writing in this inscription, an avagraha is omitted here, and the correct word is asannidhanal- owing to his absende (from the scene). If the negative a is not to be had there, the sandhi will not be at a but will be strereaft ra. Further, a locative and not an ablative is needed for the sense in spito of'.
Further our inscription says that the general became a scholar even as a boy ; thus, though he became military figure, he retained his scholarly and spiritual background, the full and eventual manifestation of whicla found a sufficient cause and occasion in the sad demise of his beloved master. That even as a general in Tiru. munaippadinādu, he was of a spiritual bent can be seen in some of the descriptive attributes and fancies in the Grāmam inscription referring to his construction of the Siva temple. The first verse describes him as Maulid ....... Kalibala-jayinām-'foremost of the victors over the strength of the Kali age, and the second verse says that he erected for Siva a temple, well established even as his own well-established mind.
Silasthaliri abhiratayé puradvishah nijāṁ iman dhiyan iva supratishthitam (akrita) He was thus & supratishthita-dhi or more or less, in the language of the Gita, sthita-prajia. • No. 735 of 1905 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection. .No. 177 of 1912 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection. • See A. R. on 8.1. Epigraphy, 1913, pp. 93-4 ; also Journal of Oriental Research, Madras, Vol. VI, pp. 229-235. • Colas, Vol. I, p. 160, f.n.
• Colas, Vol. I, p. 444. The information in the summary of our inscription given here, "favourite of the Vallabha king" is also wrong, not only wrong but contradictory to what Prof. Sastri had said earlier on p. 160, f.n.*
