Jain Journal 1986 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 18

JULY, 1986
at Chittamur." This would mean that an earlier endowment made to the temple was discontinued for reasons unknown to us and hence the queen had to restore it. Though the epigraph does not specify the nature of the grant, it may in all probability refer to the gift made for burning a perpetual lamp in the 17th regnal year of Aditya I.
This will be made clear once the identity of Kadavarkonpavai is resolved. No doubt, she was the queen of a Cola king whose name is also not mentioned in the present record. Even the epithet Kadavarkonpavai is not the personal name of the queen, and literarily it means 'the daughter of the Kadavar king'. Kadavar or Kaduvetti is an epithet attributed to the Pallava kings, and obviously, the queen referred to was the daughter of a Pallava monarch. Instances of Cola kings marrying Pallava princesses are definitely known to history, and rulers like Aditya I, Kulottunga I etc., had marrital relations with the Pallavas. Here, in this case, the Cola king who married Kadavarkonpavai was Aditya I, whose inscription is also found in Chittamur.
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This identification is further strengthened by some of Aditya's inscriptions from different places. Two of his records from Tirupalanam and Tirusatturai respectively reveal that his queen Tribhuvanamahadevi was the daughter of the queen Kaduvettigal Tamarmettiyar of the Pallava lineage. Besides, two more inscriptions of the same king from Niyamam refer to some endowments made by Marampavai, one of the queens of Nandivarman III of the Pallava dynasty.10 Evidently, Kaduvettigal Tamarmettiyar and Marampavai were the queens of Nandivarman III and the daughter born through the former was Tribhuvanamahadevi, married to Aditya I. The same princess Tribhuvanamahadevi is therefore referred to as Kadavarkonpavai, i.e., the daughter of the Pallava king, in the present epigraph.
It was in the 17th regnal year of Aditya I (888 A.D.) an endowment was made to burn a perpetual lamp in the Chittamur temple, which would not have been taken care of properly and hence his queen would have revived it. The exact year of restoring the endowment and the measures undertaken for the same could not be ascertained from the inscription. However, it would have been well within the period of her husband's reign, sometime between 888 A.D. and 907 A.D.
" SII., Vol. VII, No. 830; ARE., 203/1902.
8 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas, pp. 114, 333.
9 SII., Vol. XII, Nos. 58 & 304.
10 ARE., 13 & 16/1899.