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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1891.
thatched. The present structure is merely the remains of a former building which was partially destroyed by fire during the invasions of Tipu Sultan. Pilgrimages to it are considered by the Malayâlis to be as efficacious as similar expeditions to the holy city of Banâras. Malayalis who cannot afford the time or money for longer journeys, go thither to perform the áráddhaceremonies and commit the ashes of their fathers to the stream which, as it eventually flows into the Kâvêrî, is one of the sacred streams.' The name Tirunelli is a compound of tiru, 'sacred,' and nelli, the emblic myrobalan tree (Phyllanthus emblica, L.).'5 The Sanskrit name of the temple is Amalakam" or Sahyamalaki," from amalaka or amalaki, the emblic myrobalan tree,' and Sahya, 'the Western Ghats.' According to Mr. Castlestuart Stuart, it is also called the Siddha temple.
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The Tirunelli inscription occupies two thin copper-plates, which are strung on a plain ring. It is written in that ancient Tamil character, the modern Malayalam name of which is, according to Dr. Burnell, Vatteluttu or 'round hand,' and which, from the documents in which it is employed, might be best termed the Chêra-Pandya alphabet. A few Sanskrit words (svasti áriḥ, line 1, and sabh[a], lines 33 f. and 37) are, however, in the Grantha character. This co-existence of the Grantha and the Chêra-Pandya alphabets is also noticeable in the previously published ancient deeds from Malabar and in two Pandya copper-plate inscriptions which Mr. V. Venkayya is about to publish in the pages of this Journal. The language is Tamil. But, as in Malayalam, the double nasal appears in the words sinnam for tinha (line 2), sannaran for samkara (1. 5), vannu for vandu (1. 7), tánattinnu for taṇattininru (1. 14), áráññu and arinu for árúyndu and arindu (1. 16), kalainňu for kalanju (1. 19), and amúru for ainniru (1. 26). These peculiarities suggest that, like the deeds from Cochin and Kottayam,10 the inscription must belong to a period during which Malayalam had not yet branched off from Tamil, but was just beginning to develop a few distinguishing characteristics.
The contents of the Tirunelli plates are as obscure and difficult as those of the previously published ancient copper-plates from the Western Coast; and the translation which I am able to offer, is merely tentative. Of the concluding portion (from the middle of line 30 to the end) even the transcript must not be considered as final. The characters of this passage, which seems to be a later postscript, are smaller, more developed and less carefully executed than those in the preceding part. In particular, lines 31 to 33 are altogether unintelligible. But so much is certain, that the plates contain an order which regulated the income of the Tirunelli temple and which was issued by Samkara-Kodavarman of Puraigilanaḍu, the division of Palakkadu (Palghat), who must have been a vassal of the king, Bhaskara-Ravivarman, with whose name the document opens. The date of the order was the forty-sixth year (andu) opposite to the current year (yandu) of His Majesty king Bhaskara-Ravivarman, the month of Makara (of that year) during which Jupiter was standing in Simha, (and which was identical with) the above year (andu).' This date cannot be considered without a reference to the three ancient deeds from Malabar, which were so ably interpreted by Dr. Gundert.12 These are:
"
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Abstract from an official report, kindly communicated by Mr. Castlestuart Stuart.
Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson, s. v. Myrobalan. Dr. Gundert's Malayalam Dictionary, 8. v. ibid. a. v. Tirunelli. 8 South-Indian Palæography, 2nd edition, p. 52. Some of these changes are registered in Dr. Gundert's Malayalam Grammar, 2nd edition, p. 11. 10 Dr. Caldwell (Comparative Grammar, 2nd edition, p. 90 of the Introduction) remarks with reference to these deeds: Though words and forms which are peculiar to Malayalam may be detected in them, the general style of the language in which they are written is Tamil, the inflexions of the nouns and verbs are Tamil, and the idiom is mostly Tamil; and we are, therefore, led to infer that, at that period, Tamil was the language at least of the court and of the educated classes in the Malayalam country, and that, what is now called Malayalam, if it then existed at all, was probably nothing more than a patois current amongst the inhabitants of the hills and jungles in the interior.'
11 See note 39 on the translation.
12 Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Vol. XIII. Part I. pp. 115 ff. Kookel Keloo Nair has reprinted Dr. Gundert's translations, with the addition of some wild speculations of his own, in Vol. XXI. pp. 80 ff.
