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Documents 1201–1250 of 1787 matching.

SII 2.99: original edition by H. Krishna Sastri

DHARMA team.

Summary: Taṇḍantōṭṭam (i.e. Tandantōttam, No. 134 of the Madras Survey map of the Kumbakonam taluk) is a village 6 miles east of Kumbakōṇam in the Tanjore district of the Madras Presidency. The existence of the plates was brought to the notice of the late Rai Bahadur V.Venkayya, M.A., by Mr. Narayanaswami Aiyar, Sub-Inspector of Police, Madras City. It is stated that they “were found with many other idols, while digging a foundation in the premises of a Śiva temple in the village of Thandanthottam, Kumbakonam taluk of Tanjore district, about 100 years ago. No one knew what it is and how they happened to be there.”

The plates are 14 in number, each measuring about 11(1/4)" by 3(3/4)". When they were produced before Mr. Venkayya the plates were strung on a ring which did not appear to have been previously cut.¹ The ring is somewhat oval with diameters measuring 6(1/2)" and 7(3/4)". Its ends are secured at the bottom of a circular seal 3" in diameter. The seal bears in relief a couchant Pallava bull facing the proper right. Along the margin of the seal is a Grantha legend which is illegible. The ring on which the plates are strung was cut by me with the permission of Mr. Narayanaswami Aiyar in order to change out the plates and prepare ink-impressions.

The two sides of the first plate, the first side of the second plate and the first five lines of its second side are in Sanskṛit verse, engraved in the Grantha alphabet and the rest, in the Tamil language and characters. The inscription must originally have consisted of many more plates, two or three of which at least are missing at the beginning. These would have supplied a genealogy of the Pallava kings similar to that of the Vēlūrpāḷaiyam plates of Vijaya-Nandivarman published above. The concluding words of some of the plates in the middle do not fit in with the opening words of the succeeding plates. Consequently, it is presumed that a few plates² of the grant portion are also lost. This presumption is confirmed by the fact that while the number of the donees according to the Sanskṛit portion has to be 308, the number actually registered is only 244, even including those whose names seem to have been added subsequently in comparatively later characters, or at least in a different hand.

The first plate of the preserved portion begins by referring to a king who conquered the South and stating that a certain Hiraṇyavarman was born “again” for the “welfare of the worlds” (jagatām hitāya V. 1). His son was Nandivarman who perhaps held the biruda Ēkadhīra³. The next six verses are taken up with the praise of Nandivarman. Two historical facts referred to in this part of the inscription are interesting. One of them is that Nandivarman took away from the Gaṅga king a neck-ornament which contained in it the gem called Ugrōdaya (V. 6). The name of this Gaṅga king, however, is not furnished. The other is that Nandivarman was the owner of an elephant named Paṭṭavardhana (V. 7). With the permission of the king, a certain Dayāmukha caused a village to be granted to 308 Brāhmaṇas and called it Dayāmukhamaṅgala after his own name (V. 9). The executor (ājñapti) of the grant was evidently the very same person Dayāmukha entitled Kumāra, who is stated to have been the king’s treasurer (V. 10). The composer of the eulogy (praśasti) was Paramēśvara Uttarakāraṇika son of Param-Ōttarakāraṇika (V. 14).

The Tamil portion is dated in the 58th year of Kōvijaya-Nandivikramavarman and registers a gift of land (converted into a village⁴) lying to the west of Taṇḍattōṭṭam (i.e. Taṇḍantōṭṭam) in Teṉkarai-Naṟaiyūr-nāḍu, a district of the Chōḷa country, to a number of Brāhmaṇas of Nalgūr⁵.

To judge from the high regnal year, the Taṇḍattōṭṭam plates must belong to the reign of that Pallava king Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman whose Tiruvallam rock inscription is dated in his 62nd year i.e. 4 years later than our plates⁶. At the same time the alphabet of the plates and the name of the king lead us to infer that the Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman who issued these plates may be identical with Vijaya-Nandivarman III, the donor of the Vēlūrpāḷaiyam plates. If the inscription were preserved in full, this question would not have been left to surmise and conjecture. The father of Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman is here stated to have been Hiraṇyavarman; while, the father of Vijaya-Nandivarman, according to the Vēlūrpāḷaiyam plates, was Dantivarman. If the proposed identity of Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman with Vijaya-Nandivarman is accepted, the apparent discrepancy in the name of the father could be explained. The statement that Hiraṇyavarman “was born again,” evidently indicates a second king of that name and we may suppose that Dantivarman, the father of Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman, was also called Hiraṇyavarman like his grandfather Hiraṇyavarman I the father of Nandivarman Pallavamalla. If the foregoing surmises are confirmed by future researches, the Taṇḍantōṭṭam grant would be 52 years later than the Vēlūrpāḷaiyam plates of the same king.

The donees whose enumeration occupies more than eleven plates of the inscription number 244. They belong to various gōtras and sūtras. To judge from their titles (such as Chaturvēdin, Trivēdin, Sōmayājin, Vasantayājin, Shaḍaṅgavid, Bhaṭṭa, Kramavid, Sarvakratuyājin, Daśapurīya⁷, Agnichit, and Vājapēyin) most of them must have been learned men as stated in verse 9. The largest number of shares assigned to a single individual is 12 and such a recipient was Attōṇa-Shaḍaṅgavi-Sōmayājin (No. 109) whose gōtra and sūtra are lost on one of the missing plates. The composer of the inscription, viz., Uttarakāraṇika alias Ayyaṉ Paramēśvara of the Rathītara-gōtra and Paviṛiya-sūtra (No. 128) received two shares. Among the other donees, Tiruvaḍigaḷ (evidently the name of the local Vishṇu temple or of the Śaiva devotees, as stated on page (41) of the introduction) got 5 shares while Mahādēva (the Śiva temple) was assigned 2 shares. One share was allotted to the reciter of the Bhārata; and the three arbitrators (madhyastha) got one share each. A share was assigned for “pouring water” and for “lighting fire” in the hall (ambalam). Perhaps this was the hall where the village assembly used to meet. Apparently the Bhārata was also recited in this same hall. The donees seem to have belonged to different parts of the country. The names of their native villages indicate that a pretty large number of them must have been originally residents of the Telugu country. Taṇukkil, Kārambichchēḍu, Iṛakkandoṟu, Iruṅgaṇḍi, Nambūr, Karañjai⁸, Piṇukkippaṟu⁹, Vēlpaṟu, Poppaṟu, Vaṅgippaṟu, Aṭṭambaṟu, Muḍipaṟu (or Muḍapaṟu), Virippaṟu, Arasappaṟu, Karippaṟu, Nūttilāppaṟu and Ponnambaṟu are apparently names of villages which were probably situated in the Telugu country. Kumiṛūr, Kāṭṭukkuṟi, Maṇaṟkāl, Mandiram, Paṟiyalūr, Pāḍagam, Pāṟkuḷam, Aṅgārai, Kaḷattūr, Veṇṇainallūr, Perumbūdūr, Kāynīrkuḷam, Īykkāṭṭukkōyil, Śiṟupaṛuvūr, Puliyūr (in Miṛalai-nāḍu), Aruvāgūr and Taramanallūr (in Aruvā-nāḍu)¹⁰ are distinctly Tamil names. The donees whose native villages may be presumed to have been situated in the Telugu country need not necessarily have immigrated into the Chōḷa country at the time of the grant. They might have been settled there sometime before. In any case it is clear that there was a large colony of Telugu Brāhmaṇas in the heart of the Chōḷa country during the first half of the 9th century A.D. The Telugu birudas of the Pallava king Mahēndravarman found in the Trichinopoly cave inscription,¹¹ testify to the influence of the Telugu people in the Chōḷa country already in the 7th century A.D. It is worthy of note that a large number of the village names are now held as titles by some well-known Śrī-Vaishṇava families—Dvēdaikōmapuram (Vēdagōmapura), Vaṅgippaṟu (Vaṅgippura), Uruppiṭṭūr (Uruppuṭṭūr), Kārambichchēḍu (Kārambichchēṭṭu), Śrīmalai (Tirumalai), Pattaṅgi, Vīravaḷḷi (Vīravalli), Muḍumbe, Taṇukkil, Kumāṇḍūr, Puttūr, Śēṭṭalūr and Kuṇḍūr being some. Maṇaṟkāl has evidently lent its name to one of the later Vaishṇava āchāryas of the 12th century, named Maṇakkāl-Nambi.

Languages: Sanskrit, Source Language (other), Tamil.