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No. 41) TINGALUR INSCRIPTION OF KO-NATTAN VIKRAMA CHOLA
SAKA 967 No. 41-TINGALUR INSCRIPTION OF KO-NATTAN VIKRAMACHOLA,
SAKA 967
(1 plate)
K. A. NILAKANTA SASTRI, MYSORE, AND T. N. SUBRAMANIAM, MADRAS Tingaļür is a small village about 74 miles north-west of the Perundusai Railway Station in the Erode Taluk of the Coimbatore District, Madras State, and forms along with Vijayamangalam, another village about 4 miles to its south, one of the few Jaina centres in the Tamil country. Besides the Jaina temple of Pushpanātha, it contains two other temples, one for Siva (Chandramaulībvara) and the other for Vishnu (Alagiyarāja-Perumā!). In inscriptions, the Jaina temple is known as Chandravasati, while the Siva temple is referred to as that of Chandrapura-udaiyar or Chandrapurēśvaram-udaiyar. These appear to have been so called after the name of the village Tingaļūr, the Tamil word tingal meaning the moon (chandra).
This village which lies in the heart of the Kongu country is mentioned in the Sendalai pillar inscriptions as one of the several places where the Mifttaraiyan chief, Perumbidugu Muttaraiyan alías Suvaran Maran, fought and gained victories. At Tingaļūr he is said to have captured the elephants of the Pandya.. It will thus be seen that the antiquity of the village dates from the 8th or 9th oentury of the Christian era.
The subjoined inscription, which is found engraved on the door post of the kitchen in the Jaina temple at Tingaļür, is now edited here from an inked impression, kindly placed at our disposal by the Government Epigraphist for India.
This short record consists of 21 lines of writing neatly ruled out between each line; the first line containing the words svasti sri is written in the Grantha script. The remaining twenty lines are in the Tamil language and script.
The way in which the numerical figures for the Saka year 967 are written in the record deserves notice. The figure for 9 is followed by the symbol for 100 as usual in all the other inscriptions from the Tamil country. After that the figures for 6 and 7 are written consecutively without the symbol for 10 intervening, as if these figures have been written according to the system of decimal notation. It is true that numerals are found expressed in decimal notation in the North Iridian inscriptions from about 600 A.D.; but it has not been found in the South, particularly in the Tamil inscriptions. It may, therefore, be taken that the symbol for 10 has been left out inadvertently.
The orthographical peculiarities found in the inscription are few. The use of the pronoun nän in the first person singular as found in this inscription, though not unknown to the records
1 ARSIE for the year 1905 contains 17 inscriptions (Nos. 602-618) secured from this place ; excepting one record (No. 602) of Hoysala Vira-Rāmanātha and another (No. 617) of Jaţāvarman Sundara pāņdys, all the others belong to various kings of the Kongu line of rulers.
* Cf. the inscription edited here. • ARSIE, 1905, No. 603. • Ibid., No. 605.
* Above, Vol. XIII, p. 137, where the editor has identified the place with the village of the same name situated about 8 miles north-east of Tañjāvür and well-known as the native village of Appudi-Nayaņār, one of the sixty. three Saiva devotees. But the inscription describes the place as "Tingalûr where descending clonde (rest]" and this description will be appropriate only to the village in the Coimbatore District to the west of Sendalai and not to the village of the bame name in the Tanjavur District to the east of Sendalai.
Ibid., p. 147, Inscription F on the third pillar. 1 ARSIE, 1905, No. 614.
