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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[June, 1896.
not prepared to accept such an alternative, as gratuitous as it is unavailing. It seems to me, therefore, that the best course now open to us is to take the expression as borrowed from the Andadi itself. I am not aware of any fact that can militate against such a view. On the contrary, all that we are able to glean from the Andadi, or the account of its author given by Umapati, goes only to strengthen the easy inference we have drawn. According to this last authority, the patron of Nambi was Rajaraja Abhaya Kulasekhara Chola: and we know from his Tanjore inscriptions that the glorious reign of the great Rajaraja, who in his latter days assumed the title of SivapAdaśêkhara, 67 was exactly the period when such a grand undertaking as that of Nambi, the compilation of the Tamil Védas, could have been taken up. Seldom does a great deed in letters or religion synchronize with national dejection : nor is it often that such exceptional national prosperity as the Tamilas enjoyed under Rajaraja, fails to leave its high-water-mark in some branch of learning or other. It is true that Nambi does not mention Rajaraja by name in his Andadi, but it is well known that in the host of titles and birudas under which he passed, Rajaraja was but one, and one by no means the most prominent in his own days, nor the earliest assumed. Allusion, however, is made to his conquest of Ceylon, one of the early achievements of Rajaraja.68 Nambi refers also more than once to the munificence of the Chola, who covered with gold plates the roof of the temple at Chidambaram, and we know this prince is now generally taken to be Parântaka I., the forefather of Rajaraja. But from the tone in which this reference is made, as well as from the fact that Nambi embodies, in his eleventh or last volume of Saiva sacred writings, the poems of Gandarådityavarman, a later prince of the same dynasty, the upper limit of Nambi's age may be safely fixed. After the days of Gandaraditya, we know of no Rajaraja in the same dynasty, who could have encouraged Nambi in his grand andertaking, except the great Rajaraja, whose accession is now calculated to have taken place in A. D. 984-85. Do not these circumstances then render it extremely probable, if not certain, that Rajaraja's temple-manager was quoting but the words of the great Saiva sage of the period, patronized by his own old glorious sovereign master, when he engraved the inscription near the copper image set up as a practical lesson to the new Chola prince Rajendra, in the third year of his reign ? I scruple not to answer in the affirmative, and to conclude that Nambi Andar Nambi was & contemporary of the Rajaraja of the Tanjore inscriptions. If then Nambi wrote his Andádi before the close of the 10th century, when could Sambandha worshipped in that poem have lived ? Not surely at the end of the 13th. An inscription]1 in the Tanjore temple now places it beyond all donbt that Sambandha and his colleagues were objects of even popular worship in the age of Rajaraja. It records the setting up of the images of Nambi Arůrapar (i. o.) Sandara, Nangai Paravaiyar (i. e.) Sandara's consort, Tirunavukkaraiyar and Tiruñanasambandadigal, in the 29th year of the reign of this famous Chola emperor. Adverting to this record, Dr. Hultzsch writes : “ This inscription is of great importance for the history of Tamil literature, as it forms & terminus ad quem for the time of the reputed authors of the Détáram. Dr. Caldwell was inclined to assign this poem to the end of the 13th century. But the present inscription shews that it must have been written before the time of Rajarajadêva." It was more with a sense of
61 Bouth-Indian Inscriptions, Vol. II. p. 2. Verses 50 and 65. " See note 8, above.
50 [The following will shew that the patron of Nambi Åndar Nambi cannot have been the Chota king Rajaraja. who ascended the throne in A, D, 084-85. Among the works incorporated by Nambi in the Tinklaippa there is a hymn dedicated to the Gaigaikonda-Chiefvars temple (see note 90, below). By this is probably meant the temple at Gangaikondacbőlapuram, which is now called Brihadiévara and which was founded by Gangaikonda. Chola. This name was borne by several Chola kinge, of whom the earliest wa Ajendra-Chôla, the son and successor of RAjarkija (ante, Vol. XXI. p. 323). Even if we suppose that the temple referred to in the Tir-Isernd was built by Rajendra Chola bimself, some time must have ela pred before the hymu in question could be deemed sacred and worthy of being included in the same class as the Derlina Hy . Consequently Nambi Apdør Nambi must have lived long after Rijendra Chola, who built the temple to which the hymn in the Tiru-l aippa is dedicated. -V: Venkayya.)
11 South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. II, No. 38. .
