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Pudukkottai District
15. Sittanavasal : It is the most celebrated Jaina centre in Pudukkottai district. About nine and a half miles from Pudukkottai town is a small hamlet Sittanavasal. On the hill near the village at an inaccessible height is a natural cavern formed of a cleft which divides the overhanging top portion from the rocky floor below. The cavern is locally known as eldipāttam on account of seven square holes used as 'steps' for reaching the cavern. Seventeen beds are chiselled in the cavern some of which are damaged, but all have pillow lofts. Round the top and left side of the largest bed is a Brahmi inscription.
According to the inscription, the stone bed was caused to be made by Ilayar of the village Cirupavil for the monk Kavuti Iten who was born at Kumulur in Eruminadu.27 The villages such as Cirupavil and Kumulur have not been identified. Eruminadu may be identical with Mahişamandala (Mysore region). If the identification is acceptable, it would reveal that some ascetics of the Jaina persuasion migrated to the extreme south from Karnataka to propagate the gospel of the Jina.
Sittanavasal continued to flourish as a stronghold of the Jaina sect from the 7th to the 9th century A.D. A rock cut temple dedicated to three Tirthankaras had been hewn out of the nearby hillock in the 7th century A.D. Subsequently, in the middle of the 9th century A.D., it was renovated and repaired by llangautaman, a well known Jaina teacher of Madurai during the reign of the Pandya king Srimara Srivallabha. Exquisite paintings depicting samavasaraņa, lotus tank, dancers etc., were executed on the ceiling of the mandapa and the corbels of the pillars.28
Jaina ascetics like Sri Pirutivinachan, Tirunilan, Tiruppuranan, Tittaicharanan, Tiruchattan, Purnacandran etc., were associated with this religious institution when Jainism was on its ascendancy at Sittanavasal.29
Trichirappalli District
16. Pugalur : Pugalur is a small village in Karur taluk where a low hill called Arunattarmalai contains caverns with rock-cut beds and pillow
27 T. V. Mahalingam, Op. cit., pp. 245-250. 28 SII, Vol. XIV, No. 45. 29 ARE, 325, 329, 330/1960-61.
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