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NOVEMBER, 1927]
MAIYILARPU
197
MAIYILARPU. By Pror,S, KRISHNASWAMI AIYANGAR, M.A., (Hoxy.) PH.D. PROFESSOR FRANKLIN EDGERTON of Yale, the learned editor of the Panchatantra, wished to know, during his stay in Madras, whether I knew of any place which would correspond to the Mahiļârópya of the Panchatantra, as he suspected that it might be a place in South India, Having regard to the difficulty that he himself suggested, that the word did not look quite as a Sanskrit expression, I suggested to him that, as Sanskrit authors were sometimes in the habit of Sanskritising words of other Indian languages, Mahiļårópya may possibly be a Sanskritising from the word 'Maiyilârpu', which was the old name of Mylapore, and I put together the following note for his information. As the remarks may be of some use to others as well as to the learned professor, I am publishing it as a note in the Indian Antiquary. Should the possibility of a closer connection between Mahiļârôpya and Maiyilappu seem to me worth putting forward, I shall take occasion to send another similar note then.
The town or the ward which goes by the name of Mylapore in modern times, is hardly referred to in that form in Tamil literature. The form usually found there is Mayilai with various additions in the shape of affixes and prefixes of a more or less complimentary character according to occasion. The combination in which it usually occurs is Mallai and Mayilait in the period of Pallava ascendency, Mallai standing for what we now know as Mahabalipuram and Mayilai similarly standing for Mylapore as we call it at present in the Anglo-Indian form of the name. But this Mayilai seems at one period of history, a pretty long period, to have taken the form of Mayilarpu in inscriptions, and even in literature, notwithstanding the fact that the ordinary form is Mayilai, as I stated already, is found in inscriptions ranging from the seventh year of Kampavarman, one of the last Pallavas in the ninth century, down to almost the end of the eleventh century. This occurs in inscriptions in various localities where flourished mercantile guilds or communities called Valanjiyar in Tamil, Banajigas in Kanarese, Balija in Telugu, corresponding exactly to the North Indian term Baniya. A community of 500, referred to as connected with Mylapore, entered into an agreement of a tercantile and fiscal character, along with matters of local government, in respect of the town. Some of these inscriptions belong to Tiruvottiyur, a northern suburb of Madras where the donor is described es coming from Mayilarpu, defined as belonging to the particularly smaller unit of its own name, and the larger division of the country, giving us to understand unmistakably that what is referred to is the then little town of Mylapore. Thus we have inscriptional authority for the name Mayil&rpu in inscriptions of Kampavarman datable to the ninth century, of Rajaraja de table in the early years of the eleventh century, and one or two others in characters generally referred to the eleventh century.
Mayil&rpu in Tamil falls into two parts, Mayil,' peacock, and 'appu, an abstract noun or noun of action, from 'al' to move, a movement indicating the peculiarly majestic strut of the peacock. In literature it is ordinarily described as a feature peculiar to the peacock dancing in this fashion, as it is a peculiar feature of the cuckoo to sing, as in Mayil ala and Kuyil ahava, the two verbs, ala meaning to move, and ahava meaning to speak or produce sound. In the Prabandham of the Vaishnavas, in the section relating to Triplioane in the work Tirumangai Alvår, the dancing of the peacock is described in general terms as a feature of Mylapore in
1 Tirumangai Alvår's Periya-tirumoli, II, 1, 2, 9, 10. Nandilkalambakam, verses 1, 3, 24, 44, 51, 55 for Mayilai. Verse 69, lowever, shows the form Mayilapuri in some MSS. and this is only a variant of Mayilai. Verses 1, 9, 25, 34, 40, 46, 54, 72, 73, 75, 83, 88 for Mallai.
3 No. 256 of 1912 and soction 25 of the Epigraphical Report for 1913. 9 No. 261 of 1910, 18th year of Rajaraja I; No. 189 of 1912, 7th year of Kampavarman. 4 Periya-tirumoli, II.3, 7.
குரவமேகமழுங் குளிர்பொழிலூடு குயிலொடு மயில்கள் நின்றால.
