South Indian Inscriptions

MISCELLANEOUS

the present name of the village, namely Elavānāśūr. This author’s name was Tirumalai-Nayinār Chandraśekhara and he was the disciple of Satyajñāna- Dariśanigaḷ of the Meykaṇḍa-santāna of Tiruvaṇṇāmalai. The record is dated in Śaka 1432 and as such the author must have flourished in the 16th century A.D.

Memorials of self-immolation.
   81. In the Tirukkoyilur taluk of the South Arcot district have been found a few crudely dressed slabs bearing inscriptions in Tamil characters assignable to about the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. (Nos. 458 to 461). These slabs which hare called tari or ‘ upright posts ’ in one of the four records (No. 460) bear no sculptural representations on them, but mention merely the names of the women who had observed some (unspecified) vow (nōnbu), which in No. 234 of 1936-37 from the same taluk is specifically stated to have been performed in a Durgā temple. Such records are peculiar to this locality and period, and have not been met with anywhere else in the Tamil districts. It may be presumed that these slabs had been set up to serve as memorials for some vow, possibly of self-immolation by fasting or otherwise, observed by the ladies mentioned in the records. In two instances these are specifically stated to be Brahman ladies (Nos. 227 of 1934-35 and No. 458) with the names of their husbands mentioned, while in the case of the women referred to in the Kaṇḍāchchipuram tablets (Nos. 57 to 59 of 1935-36) their fathers’ names alone are given. Memorial stones are common in the Kannaḍa country, where they are called tōḷ-kai-koṭṭa-kambha; and they are easily distinguishable by the representations of an arm bent at right angles at the elbow and raised up, which are generally sculptured on them. In the case of the Tirukkoyilur records, however, the vows performed by these women are called simply paraṇi or nōnbu, without any specific clue to their nature.

   It may also be mentioned in this connection that in some sculptures of Durgā dating from early Pallava times in the 7th century A.D. as in the Lower rock-cut cave at Trichinopoly, the figure of a man goddess. A record from Mallām in the Nellore district (No. 498 of 1908) states that the person, whose figure is also sculptured underneath it in the act of cutting off his own head, sliced out pieces of flesh from several parts of his body, and finally offered his head to the goddess. Durgā-Bhaṭāri. A few other slabs containing sculptures of a later period depicting such acts of self-decapitation are also found in front of the same temple*. Instances of voluntary human sacrifices in fulfilment of some vows are also found in Tamil literature. Sculptures representing such acts have been noticed in the Kannaḍa and Telugu countries also. Mr. Rice draws attention to the existence of similar figures belonging to the tenth century A.D. during the Gaṅga and later periods (Coorg Inscriptions, Introduction, p.9). Similar sculptures were recently noticed by me at Gurazāla in the Palnad taluk of the Guntur district. The Vīraśirōmaṇḍapa which the Reḍḍi chief Anna-Vēma had built Śrīśailam was possibly meant for such sacrifices (Ep. Rep. 1915, page 93, para. 15). This would throw an interesting light on the forms of propitiation practised by the ardent devotees of god Mallikājuna or his consort Bhramarāmbā,

   Attention may here be drawn to a Bengali custom mentioned in Rajendralal Mitra’s Indo-Aryans (quoted in Q. J. M. S., Vol. XXIX, p. 505), according to which Hindu women shed a few drops of their own blood from between their breasts as an act of propitiation of the goddess Durgā in fulfilment of a vow made for the recovery of a patient. This seems to be merely a symbolic act of self-sacrifice practiced in earlier times. It is possible that the nōnbu referred to in the present epigraphs might have been of a similar nature and it did not involve actual loss of life.

  Chiefs of the Durjaya family.
82. An inscribed pillar at Mādala in the Sattenpalle taluk of the Guntur district contains five inscriptions (Nos. 344 to 348) ranging in dates from Śaka 1047 to 1204. Of these records, two, Nos. 348 and 346, belong to the chiefs of the Durjaya family who bear the characteristic epithets ‘ a lion in the mountain viz., the Durjaya race ’, ;the ornament to the Valaraṭla-kula’, ‘the

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* A few slabs of this type are also found at Tiruvorriyūr near Madras.