________________
JULY, 1896.)
SOME SOVEREIGNS OF TRAVANCORE.
189
Thus it will be seen that this Tamil portion of the inscription adds a few particulars to those found in the Sanskřit verse above cited. A fracture having occurred on the lower right-hand corner of the front part of the tablet, a few words of the royal writ are irrecoverably lost. But fortunately these words happen only to be those describing the lands from which the smaller portion of the supply, viz, six kalam of paddy, is to be drawn. It will be noticed that even as late as 578, the measure used was called kalam and not kölfai, marakkal, or parai, as at present. The word perai occurs as a part of the name of a particular piece of land, and it seems to me that the underivable modern term parai, used in Trivandrum and North Travancore both as land and paddy measure, might be traced to perai and therefore to peru, meaning to contain,' 'to be worth,' or 'to multiply.' I have rendered the illalavu as
home measure,' and if I am right in my interpretation it will imply that some foreign measure was also then current in the country. The word vaišvadé va usually means certain offerings to departed forefathers, and since clarified butter alone is provided for, we have to take the offerings as having been of the nature of a sacrificial fire. As in our former documents, so in this we find reference made to the village councils of those days, which, it would appear, had influence and independence enough to obstruct the provisions of a royal charter. In the case of such obstruction, however, provision was made for an appeal to be taken to the door,' which we may take to be the door of the temple, and, therefore, to the Government authorities connected with the temple. The curious caste name Váriyan occurs in this inscription : and the attempts made to explain the term are so typical of the spirit of myth-making, so characteristic of Eastern scholarship, that I am tempted to borrow a passage on the subject from the pages of the last Census Report of Travancore -
"Sri-Parasurama," so runs the paragraph on The Origin and Caste Derivation of Váriyara, “having brought in Brahmans from outside to colonize Malabar, detailed the Súdras to do menial services for them. The Brâhmaņs finding the Sadras unfit from a religious point of view for pagoda service, they prayed to Parasurama to help them in their difficulty. SriParasurama appeared unto them and created out of water a new caste for pagoda service. They were called Varijanmar (from the root vári - water), which gradually became Vâriyanmar." Thus in the attempt to trace a clear Dravidian word to a Sanskrit root, the special creation hypothesis is strained to breaking point. But the derivation, however gratifying to the Sanskrit grammarian, does not satisfy the Nambari philosopher, as it leaves unsettled the water-made Vâriyar's position in the Aryan hierarchy. A new tradition is therefore invented, and the paragraph goes on to add :--" There is also another tradition current about their origin, according to which a certain Sudra woman was doing menial service in the pagoda. She was ordered by the Brâhmaņs employed in the temple to sweep away the bones, etc., that lay within the precincts of the pagoda. She did so, in conseqnence of which her caste people excommunicated her from their order. But the Brahmans allowed her to remain in the pagoda service separate from her own caste people. She and her descendants were per. mitted to live on terms of sambandha with Brahmaņs, thus constituting them into a separate caste, and fordidding them to interdine with Sudras. According to the ordinances of Yâjñavalkya, the offspring of a mixed connection of a Brihman with a Sudra woman were termed Variyars." Thus, then, does the Nambûri seek to check the undue aspirations of his cleanly Vâriyar colleagues in the temple by assigning to them a Sûdraic origin. But the Variyars themselves are not wanting in inventive genins, and so the paragraph concludes with yet another tradition of their origin. "According to the Bhugolapurána," continues the Report, "there lived in Trichur & certain old Namburi Brahman married to a young Brahman girl. Wishing for progeny she commenced a course of devotion to the village god, one portion of which was the making of garlands of flowers
Till recently the official term for revenue district was mandapattum vadukkal, meaning the door of the mandapa.' This Malay Alam word is fast giving way to the Hindustani term taluk.
. See page 746.
