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Annual Reports |
THE MADURA NAYAKAS maṭha on the bund of the tank in the Tiruvaṇṇāmalai street, to pay towards its maintenance a paṇam every year on each of their houses, besides special taxes of 2 paṇam and 1 paṇam respectively on occasions of marriage and funerals. The Tātan (dāsan) who went about making the collections as they fell due, was to receive food from the parties. The fees collected for the tonsures performed at Śrīvilliputtūr also went towards the maintenance of this maṭha. This record is like any one of the numerous other documents which have been found in the possession of private parties establishing their right for some privileges and collection of small rates. The flagrant historical inaccuracies found in the preamble have to be accounted for by supposing that the document does not appear to have received official recognition, as it was purely a private transaction in which the barbers agreed among themselves to levy a contribution towards the maintenance of the maṭha of their community. At Śrīraṅgam, Vijayaraṅga-Chokkanātha built the Vēdapārāyaṇa-maṇḍapa as testified to by a Telugu label engraved on the beam of a maṇḍapa in the third prākāra of the Raṅganātha temple, and copied this year. He had also made many munificent donations to this temple, and life-size statues in ivory of himself and of his consort kept in the second prākāra of the temple are permanent reminders of the great devotion which he had for god Raṅganātha. A few of the bronze and ivory statuettes kept in the Dēvasthānam Museum are probably votive images representing him. It may be mentioned that this Nāyaka ruler uses the sign-manual ‘ Śrīrāma’ in his copper-plate records. Queen Minakshi.
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