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306
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1895.
the date of this document, was Sri-Vîra-Iraman Keralavarman. The last letter in the part of the name actually found is i, which can combine with no other letter in the alphabhet than a k; and the next inscription, which is but five years later, completes the name exactly as we should expect. Fortunately for us, again, the last word with which the opening line breaks off, is "Kollam 384,':- the year of the document; and this date is confirmed, if need be, by the closing linc, fixing the time for the payment of the first half-yearly dues in Vrischika 395. This mention of the month, with which the first half-year ends, enables us further to fix the month of the grant itself as Mithuna preceding. Supposing a full half-year was to expire in Vrischika for the payment to be due, we have only to shift the date of the grant a month earlier, i. c., Idavam 384. Thus, then, we may be perfectly sure that, about May or June 1209, Venad was ruled by Sri-Vira-Rama-Keralavarma Tiruvadi.
Certain other inferences, equally unquestionable, may be also made from the record in hand. For instance, it is impossible to doubt that in 384, Trivandram, like so many other villages, had a sabhá or assembly, with a sabhanjita, chairman or secretary, of its own, and tbat it used to meet on occasions of importance in the old temple at Mitranandapuram, about a couple of furlongs to the west of the present shrine of Sri-Padmanabha. The south-western corner of the courtyard of this temple is still pointed out as the sacred spot where sabhas used to meet of old, and the word "tel' or south, in our inscription, serves as no dubious guide to that spot. The raised floor of this hall still remains, but the roof, which must have resounded with the voice of many a wise council, is now no more. Fragments of apparently very old inscriptions in the Mitranandapuram temple speak also of memorable meetings of the sabha in the same * southern hall." These meetings are recorded to have taken place in the "solemn presence." of the Badâra or Bhattaraka Tiruvadi of the locality, enabling us thus to infer that the solemn presence, with which the meeting here recorded is said to have been honoured, must have been also of the same mysterious personality. It would appear farther from an inscription at Suchindram, dated 406 M. E., that there was at that time a senior Baqara Tiruvadi at Trivan. dram, in superior charge of the temple manngement. From this latter document, I am led also to suspect tbat by "Sri-Padam," to whom, according to the record in hand, the final appeal was to lic, in case of dispute in the administration of the land in question, is meant also the same religious functionary. This expression has now somehow or other come to be used to designate the palace, where the queen-mother resides with the junior members of her family. But the contest in the Suchîndram record, above referred to, militates against that modern application of the tern.
I would draw attention to the curious way in which the name Trivandram is bere spelt. I'wice the word occurs in the portion of the inscription preserved to us, and on both occasions it is clearly spelt Tiruvanandapuram with a long á, meaning the holy city of blessedness,' and not, as it is now universally understood, the city of Ananta, the serpent. The deity, too, of the place is named Perumal, the great one,' and not Padmanabha, the Lotus-navelled. Is it possible that the City of Blessedness passed into the City of Ananta, the serpent, with the transformation of the infinite and indefinite 'great one' into the definite Padmanabha, whose mattress Ananta is? The analogy of Mitranandapuram, the oldest temple of this town, lends support to the orthography of the inscription. But on the other hand, the Suchîndram inscription, already referred to, spells the name in the usual modern fashion. So also does the hymn in the Tiruváymoli,79 dedicated to the local deity, though, in this case, it is not as decisive as with Tiruvattår, since neither rhyme nor metre will be wholly spoiled by the substitution of one of the names for the other; and as far as I can remember, the town is mentioned nowhere else in Tamil literature.
The Sanskrit name Syánandara for Trivandram only adds to our doubts and difficulties. Underivable proper pames are by no means common in any Indian language, and in Sanskrit,
7. Vide the 2nd pattu in the pattampattu.
