|
The Indian Analyst
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA The use of the ancient form yāru of the word āru in line 5, meaning river, is peculiar for a record of the 16th century and a similar example can be found in the word yāṇḍu used for āṇḍu meaning year. The word kēlka is a dialectal variation of the original word kēṭka (kēḷ+ka=kēṭka). The word paṇḍāravāḍai in line 8 is used in the sense that the income from the lands of this village had for sometime been enjoyed by the cultivators. There is a village today in Tanjore District named Paṇḍāravāḍai. The word kaṭṭaḷai has been used with two meanings, viz., ‘order’ in line 6 and ‘arrangement’ in lines 10 and 11. The use of the honorific plural pronoun is not uniformly applied in the latter part of the sentence in lines 9 and 10 as both namakku and nān are used to denote the same person. The donor of the grant is Śrīśailapūrṇa Tātāchārya alias Avuku Tiruvēṅgaḍayyaṅgār. He received a gift of the village Chintāmaṇi from Rāmarāja and Sōmakulatilaka Sadāśiva Mahārāya and in turn granted the same, for the merit of both the Rāya and the Rāja,[1] to the temple for the expenses of offering four dishes of food to the god as was once arranged by Nalantigal Nārāyaṇa Jīyar, allotting a share of the offering for himself and his descendants. The village is stated to have been in former times given to the temple by a local Chōḷa king after settling a dispute over a stream cut from the main river. Then after a long time the village passed on to the ownership of the cultivators. Again the village was left uncultivated after a short period. Hence Tiruvēṅgaḍayyaṅgār, the present donor who had himself received the village as gift, renovated the same and in his turn granted it to the temple.
The role that the members of this Śrīśailapūrṇa family played in the spread of Vaishṇavism since the days of the Vijayanagara ruler Mallikārjuna, as also in the conversion of the royal family itself to the Śrīvaishṇava faith, has been already discussed[2] in this journal and elsewhere. Two records at Hampi make mention of this Tātāchārya. One of them[3] is dated Śaka 1465, i.e., about two years prior to the date of the present record. There he is stated to have granted a village, some fields and a garden to the god Viṭṭhaladēva. He is described as the son of Tirumala Avuku Tātāchārya. Since no specific mention is made of this teacher as a guru of the king, it is probable that he became the royal preceptor only two years later, i.e., about the time of the present record. The other record,[4] of Śaka 1478 at the same place, states that Aubaḷarāja, son of Rāmarāja Kōnēṭayyarāja, raised a shrine for Tirumaṅgai-Ālvār, granted a few villages for various services to be conducted for the Ālvār, and placed the endowment in the hands of Tirumañjanakālam Rāmānujayyaṅgār[5] and his disciples who were required to conduct the services for the merit of Aubaḷarāja’s preceptor Tirumala Avuku Tiruvēṅgaḍāchārya. The latter is evidently the donor of the present record. He was a descendant of Śrīśailapūrṇa[6] alias Periya Tirumalainambi, the maternal uncle of the great Viśishṭādvaita teacher, Śrī Rāmānuja. In the records about the descendants of Śrīśailapūrṇa that are available from the various places to the north and south of Tirupati, the names of the places where they settled are prefixed to their names, as in ēṭṭūr Siṅgarāchārya, Śottai Tōlappayyaṅgār, etc. Here the name Avuku or Auk indicates likewise the place where the donor had settled. His father is also called Tirumala Avuku Tātāchārya. Hence it is clear that _________________________________________________
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| > |
|
>
|