South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

TIRUVORRIYUR INSCRIPTION OF CHATURANANA PANDITA

general’s name ; and it may well be Kumāra. Fifthly, and this is only of cumulative value, the Grāmam inscriptions are in a locality over which Rājāditya was Viceroy, and it is natural that his general of the Tiruvorriyūr inscription was also in the same place.^[1]

Unfortunately, the inscriptions afford no clue to know his caste ; in one of the Grāmam inscription, his native place is called Navāgrahāra ; we do not know if we can put too much meaning into the word Agrahāra and suggest that he was a Brāhmaṇa. But the general impression left by a consideration of his life and career is clearly in favour of taking him to be of high caste.

The descriptions of the positions occupied by the general, which have been noted above, show him to have been an intimate guard of the king and a general of his chief forces. The last we hear of him as a Chōḷa commander in the Tirumunaippāḍināḍu is in 943 A.D.;^[2] next, he figures at Tiruvorriyūr as a Maṭhapati, in the eighteenth year of king Kṛishṇa III, i.e., in A.D. 957.^[3] From his second record at the latter place, i.e., the present inscription, dated in A.D. 959, we learn that his absence from the scene at Takkōlam led him to renounce worldly life. Where he was between the years 943 and 949, the date of the battle of Takkōlam, what his pre-occupation was and why he could not be by his master’s side on the occasion of the fatal engagement are more than what we can say or suggest atpresent. But one thing is certain, viz., the alleged treachery of Chaturānana Paṇḍita and his turning a spy of the Rāshṭrakūṭa king, etc.,^[4] is, as Prof. Nilakanta Sastri says, “ a most baseless conjecture.”^[5] The misunderstanding was inspired not only externally by Fleet’s wrong translation of the passage in the Āṭakūr inscription but also internally by the wrong import attached to the word Vallabha occurring in the first verse of our inscription. Vallabha refers to the general’s father as the chief of Vallabha Rāshṭra i.e., Vaḷḷuva-nāḍu, (---Vallabha-samāhvaya-rāshṭra-nāthāt) in Keraḷa, and not to the Vallabha Rāshṭrakūṭa.^[6]

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^[1] That this identification had also suggested itself to Prof. Nilakanta Sastri may be seen from his remarks. “ One wonders if this man (Chaturānana Paṇḍita) was the same as the Kēraḷa general of Rājāditya who built the Śiva temple at Grāmam …..” (Colas, Vol. II, Pt. i, p. 496, f.n. 71). In his short account of Chaturānana Paṇḍita (Colas, Vol. II, Pt, i, p. 496), Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri says that this general ‘ came to be closely associated with king Rājāditya as his guru, friend and sāmanta.’ The expression in the inscription Prakaṭatara-guru-snēha-sāmanta-bhāvaṁ means really that he became the general (sāmanta) of king Rājāditya by virtue of his great (guru) and very transparent (prakaṭatara) attachment (snēha) to the king. Prof. Sastri says also that ‘ in spite of their proximity, (italics mine) he did not have the pleasure of dying with his friend ’, and in support of this is found his citation in the foot-note sannidhānāt hamaranasukham. As has been pointed out while drawing attention to the peculiarities of the writing in this inscription, an avagraha is omitted here, and the correct word is asannidhānāt─‘ owing to his absence (from the scene)’. If the negative a is not to be had there, the sandhi will not be (Sanskrit) but will be (Sanskrit). Further, a locative and not an ablative is needed for the sense ‘in spite of’. Further our inscription says that the general became a scholar even as a boy ; thus, though he became a military figure, he retained his scholarly and spiritual background, the full and eventual manifestation of which found a sufficient cause and occasion in the sad demise of his belovedmaster. That even as a general in Tirumunaippāḍināḍu, he was of a spiritual bent can be seen in some of the descriptive attributes and fancies in the Grāmam inscription referring to his construction of the Śiva temple. The first verse describes him as Mauliḥ ……. Kalibala-jayināṁ─‘ foremost of the victors over the strength of the Kali age ’, and the second verse says that he erected for Śiva a temple, well established even as his own well-established mind. Śitāsthalīm abhiratayē puradvishaḥ nijāṁ imāṁ dhiyaṁ iva supratishṭhitāṁ (akrita) He was thus a supratishṭhita-dhī or more or less, in the language of the Gītā, sthita-prajña.
^[2] No. 735 of 1905 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection.
^[3] No. 177 of 1912 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection.
^[4] See A. R. on S. I. Epigraphy, 1913, pp. 93-4 ; also Journal of Oriental Research, Madras, Vol. VI, pp. 229-235.
^[5] Colas, Vol. I, p. 160, f.n.
^[6] Colas, Vol. I, p. 444. The information in the summary of our inscription given here, “ favourite of the Vallabha king ” is also wrong ; not only wrong but contradictory to what Prof. Sastri had said earlier on p. 160, f.n.*