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ANNUAL REPORT ON SOUTHS INDIAN EPIGRAPHY
FOR THE YEAR 1937-38.
PART I.
TOURS OF THE SUPERINTENDENT AND THE ASSISTANTS
During the tear 1937-38, I was in tour for a total period of 3 months and
10 days between 19th May 1937 and 28th March 1938 and visited 36 village
in all in the Madras Presidency and the Bombay Karnatak, where I inspected
important monuments of epigraphical and Archæological interest. In the
Nellore district I discovered in September 1937 a natural cavern on the high
hillock of Mālakoṇḍa or Mālyādri in the Kandukur taluk. A close inspection
of the area brought to light a Brāhmī-Prākṛit inscription in characters of
the Asokan period engraved on the façade of the cavern above the drip-line,
as in the case of the caverns in the Madura and Tinnevelly districts. It
records the gift (not specified) made by a certain Vīriseṭṭi of the Atuvā[ḷa]-kula.
The gift evidently consisted of the cavern made habitable for the religious
occupants for whom it must have been intended. The present find so far
north indicates the wide prevalence of this system of cavern-gifts and early
cave-writing in South India.
2. On the top of the Fort-Rock at Trichinopoly which was inspected by me
in Februarys 1938, was also discovered a cavern with early inscriptions one of
which is attributable to the second century B. C. This cavern which lies on a
ledge of rock above the upper rock-cut cave of the Pallava king Mahēndra-
varman (c. 625 A. D.) faces west and commands a picturesque view of the river
Kāvērī for a few miles along its course. It had escaped notice till now as the
approach to it is along a narrow edge of rock skirting the northern flank of
the hill and a potion of the approach has to be negotiated by crawling on all
fours underneath a projecting boulder, a false step meaning a fatal drop down
the precipitous side. On the platform outside this cavern measuring about
30 feet by 25 feet, there are scooped out in the live rock a few beds smoothened
and provided with pillows which must have been used by Buddhist or Jain
monks of ancient times. Near one of these pillows was found an archaic
inscription of about the 5th century A. D. The existence of the cavern seems
to explain the origin of the suffix paḷḷi in the name of the town Tiruchchirā-
paḷḷi (Trichinopoly) on account of its connection with an early Buddhist or
Jain colony and to throw back the antiquity of the place by some centuries
prior to Pallava times.
3. Among the other places inspected by me in the Madras Presidency may
be men tioned (1) Vaḷḷiyūr in the Tinnevelly district with its fine cavern-shrine
of Subrahmaṇya on the hill, (2) Tiruveḷḷarai, Pugaḷūr, Śukkāliyūr and Tāntōnri-
malai in the Trichinopoly district noted respectively for the old well in the
form of a Svastikā constructed in the time of the Pallava Dantivarman, an
ancient rock—cavern with Brāhinī inscriptions one of which mentions Karu-ūr
(No. 343 of 1938), rock-cut beds, and a rock-cut cave temple of Veṅkaṭara-
maṇasvāmin of the later Koṅgu period, (3) Nāmakkal in the Salem district
with its rock-cut temples of Lakshmīnarasiṁha and Raṅganātha and early
in scriptions in Pallava-Grantha script engraved on the rocky side of the hill
near the two temples. Photographs of the large sculptured panels in the rock-
cut temples of the locality were taken on this occasion (Nos. 1661-165 of
Appendix D). Though the importance of these sculptures was recognised long
ago, local priestly sentiment had made it impossible to take photographs of
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