Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): D C Sirkar
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 56

Sm. R. CHAMPAKALAKSHMI
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adiga!, a female disciple of Arişțanēmi-piļārar of Tiruppāņ. malai.' The well and a house were constituted into a nunnery under the supervision of 'the Twenty-four of the place. The twenty-four possibly formed a local Jain committee, which managed the affairs of the pen-palli or nunnery. The Tiruppānmalai or Pañcapāņdavamalai is a hillock near Viļāppäkkam and contains Jain sculptures and inscriptions of the Pallava and Cola periods, i.e. belonging to dates from the 8th to the 11th century A.D.2
Near the cavern on the top of the Karuppankuņņu, brick bats and traces of a brick structure can be seen even now. They indicate that a structural chamber or mandapa was once attached to the cavern. The cavern with beds on the Karuppankunțu is the first of its kind so far known in the Chingleput District. Similar Jain caverns with beds have been found in considerable numbers in other parts of Tondaimaņdalam (North and South Arcot Districts), where Jain sculptures and inscriptions of the 8th and 9th centuries have been recorded. Brāhmi inscriptions, which invariably accompany such caverns with beds in the southern Districts of Tamilnadu, are conspicuous by their absence in this region, the only exception being Māmaņqûr in the North Arcot District, where, however, no Jain sculptures have been found along with the cavern with beds.
The Brāhmi inscriptions of the southern Districts of Madurai and Tirunelveli and also the Districts of Tiruchirappalli and Coimbatore belong to the period from the 2nd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. Māmaņdār contains a Brāhmi inscription of about 2nd or 3rd century A. D.9 The earliest Jain inscriptions of the Tondaimaņdalam region belong to the 5th century A.D. as evidenced by the palaeography of the Tirunātharkunru inscriptions in the South Arcot District. 3 The majority of the Jain inscriptions on hills with natural
1 53 of An. Rep. Ep., 1900 ; S. Ind. Ins., Vol. VII, No. 56. 2 Ep. Ind., Vol. IV, pp. 136if.
3 I. Mahadevan, Corpus of the Tamil Brāhmi Inscriptions, App. 1, Seminar on Inscriptions, 1966, ed. R. Nagaswamy, p. 69.