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No. 33–STRAY PLATE IN MADRAS MUSEUM
(1 Plato) P. R. SRINIVASAN, MADRAS
(Received on 6.2.1958) This is a single plate bearing inscription on both sides, which was purchased by the Government Museum, Madras, in 1955, from a person who is stated to have got it from Tirupparan kunram, & suburb of Madurai. Obviously it belonged to a set of which the other plates are missing. I am editing it here with the kind permission of Dr. A. Aiyappan, Superintendent, Government Museum, Madras.
The plate measures 10" X 34' x .075". There are ten lines of writing on each side. The preservation of the writing is satisfactory excepting some letters at the beginning of a few lines on both the obverse and reverse of the plate. Though the inscription is fragmentary it is interesting in more respects than one.
The characters of the inscription are Tamil and the record may be assigned to circa 10th century A.D. on palaeographical grounds. If the information about the provenance of the plate is correct, it may suggest that the charter was issued from the Pandya kingdom. This is to some extent borne out by the use of certain expressions in the record. Cf. ārāffu (lines 1-2), Poduvan (line 6), Ilavan (line 18), etc. The introduction of the Chola variety of the Tamil script in the Pandys kingdom, where Vatteluttu was formerly in general use, was largely due to the Chola kings who began to establish their sway over the Pandya region in the tenth century.
The expressions rottar (each member), orollar (each member) and orökudi (each family) are interesting. They are characteristic of the region where the record is stated to have been found. The use of padu in ponpadunilam is interesting because it refers to a period earlier than the stage of its use solely as a passive participle. The epigraph uses the marks of pulti or vitāma, though not uniformly.
The passage that is preserved in this stray plate seems to record the settlement of one family each of the classes of shepherds, oilmongers, pottets, goldsmiths, carpenters, blacksmiths, washermen, Ilavas, Parambas and Paraiyas in a village. Some of them were assigned lands belonging to s god with whom they were required to share the produce. Unfortunately other details are lost.
The term ärāt! kkāyam and nilakkanam mentioned in the record require a word of explapation. The former stands for sonie kind of a tax levied from the people of the particular colony referred to in the inscription for the specific purpose of the festival of bathing the images of gods and goddesses in river water. The second term means 'the remittance both in kind and cash according to the land holdings that are leased out to them and enjoyed (unbadu) by the various classes of people settled in a colony'. The word kombu occurs twice in the inscription in two different contexts. In the first instance it is associated with nel or paddy (line 4) and this paddy is said to be divided into shares) and received as wage individually [by the labourers). Here the term kombu indicates the quality of the paddy. In the villages, especially in the District of Ramanathapuram, tbe meykkū!!u-al, i.e. the man or woman employed on daily wages basis, is usually paid in kind and gets a quantity of paddy of the first quality. In the second instance, it finds a place in the passage kombil külé-māyāniyum (line 8) as well as in the passage ponpadumilattu ordutarkku käl cheyyum kombil rottarkku (māgāşilyum in lines 9-10. The word kombu is sociated with lūlēmāgāniyum in the first expression and with māgāniyum in the next. It.
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