Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s2.t2: 1.2.2 Edakal: Cēra inscriptions of the Caṅkam Age
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s2.t2
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1.2.2 Edakal: Cēra inscriptions of the Caṅkam Age
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Edakal hill, about 6 km. south-west of Sultan's Battery (Sultan Batheri) in Wynad District, Kerala, is near the junction of the present states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The hill is about 1500 ft. above the local ground level and 4000 ft. above the mean sea level. On the western slope of the hill near the summit is a large cave whose walls are covered with prehistoric carvings, among which a few inscriptions of later times are found (Fig. 1.³).
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The cave was discovered in 1894 by Fawcett, the Superintendent of Police, Malabar District. He visited the cave several times more in the next two years and made careful drawings and took photographs of the rock carvings and inscriptions. He transmitted the photographs to Hultzsch, the Government Epigraphist, for his comments on the inscriptions. Hultzsch made immediate arrangements for taking estampages of the inscriptions and published a brief note (without illustrations) on the discovery.¹ He also forwarded the estampages with his detailed comments on the inscriptions to Fawcett who incorporated them along with his own drawings and photographs in the paper published by him in 1901.² Hultzsch identified four inscriptions at Edakal as in "cave characters" (the older name for the Southern Brāhmī script).³ He read two of them, one each in Sanskrit⁴ and Tamil,⁵ and assigned them to about the end of the 5th century A.D. He declared that the other two inscriptions⁶ were "unintelligible" to him, but "decidedly archaic".
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¹ Madras Government Orders Nos. 1062 & 1063, Public, dated 10th August 1897, paragraph 14; Nos. 120-123/ 1897 (in *ARE 1896-97*). Cf. one-volume reprint of *ARE 1887-1905* (1986).
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² F. Fawcett 1901(reprint 1985): pp. 409-421. See also Rajan Gurukkal and Raghava Varier 1999: pp. 85-95, 191-197.
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³ *ARE 120-123/1897* corresponding to estampages 1-4 in Fawcett 1901 (Pl. facing p. 412). No. 120 is a Sanskrit inscription not included in the present study. Nos. 121 & 122 corresponding to Nos. ***118 & 119*** are Tamil inscriptions in the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu script. No. 123 is actually a pair of short inscriptions engraved in one line, but separated by a natural cleft in the rock. They are included as Nos. ***81 & 82***.
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⁴ *ARE 120/1897*.
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⁵ *ARE 121/1897*.
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⁶ *ARE 122 & 123/1897*.
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(i) *Inscriptions neglected and lost
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One would have expected that the announcement by Hultzsch of the discovery of inscriptions in 'cave characters' not known till then to occur in the Tamil country (including the Kerala region) would have aroused the curiosity of other investigators to examine the unread inscriptions. What happened thereafter is an incredible story of long neglect and the eventual loss of the two earliest inscriptions at Edakal.⁷ During the next century, that is, between 1897 when Hultzsch had the estampages taken and 1995-96 when our team visited Edakal, there is no record of any attempt to read the inscriptions. In course of time, the inscriptions fell into total oblivion as there is virtually no mention of them in any later epigraphical publications.⁸
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⁷ *ARE 123 / 1897*.
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⁸ The only exceptions are: *SII*. VI (1928): Nos. 74-77 = *ARE 120-123/1897* without the texts. The Sanskrit inscription at Edakal as read by Hultzsch was republished in the *Corpus of the Kadamba Inscriptions*. No. 50.
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The rediscovery of the Edakal cave inscriptions came about accidentally. I was attending a seminar on epigraphy held in March 1995 in the University of Kerala at Thiruvananthapuram. There I saw exhibited enlarged photographs of Hultzsch's 1897 estampages of the Edakal inscriptions (taken from the 1985 reprint of *Indian Antiquary*, vol. XXX). None of the epigraphists from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu who were participating in the seminar had heard of these inscriptions. The photographs clearly showed that two of the inscriptions were in the Tamil-Brāhmī script of ca. 3rd century a.d. Both commence with the Tamil word *kō* 'king, chieftain' and one of them ends with the alveolar *ṉ* available only in Tamil-Brāhmī.¹
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¹ *ARE* 123 / 1897 = estampage No. 4 in Fawcett 1901= Nos. *81* & *82*.
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The unexpected discovery of the occurrence of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions in Kerala led to organising an expedition to the Edakal cave in October 1995 and again in February 1996.² During our first visit to the cave, we copied the Sanskrit inscription and the two Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions, all deeply engraved on the south rock wall of the cave and still in an excellent state of preservation. But in spite of intensive search we could not locate the pair of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions reported to be engraved on the north rock wall of the cave. We had to discontinue the search as it was getting late and we had to reach the plains before darkness fell. A second visit was organised by the team in February 1996 and this time, we were equipped with exact measurements based on Fawcett's photographs of 1894-96. We were able to locate the spot ³ where the inscriptions ought to have been, but found, to our dismay, that they had been totally obliterated by the mindless vandalism of tourists who had incised their names over them on the soft rock.⁴ At present, the only source for these two inscriptions is the excellent reproduction of Hultzsch's 1897 estampage in Fawcett 1901.⁵
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² The members of the team which visited the cave were, besides myself, Rajan Gurukkal and M.R. Raghava Varier from the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, S. Swaminathan from the Directorate of Epigraphy, ASI, Mysore, and A. Seetharaman, Thanjavur.
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³ See Fig. 1.3 in the present volume reproducing the photograph in Pl. VI: Fig. 1 in Fawcett 1901. The Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions are visible at top left. They are no longer extant.
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⁴ The vandalism had started right from the discovery of the cave. Hultzsch noted, "To the right of the second line, [photograph] No. 1. shows the signature of a certain C. Kannan in modern Malayalam characters". Fawcett added drily, "In reference to the above remarks, I may note that the C. Kannan was the work of one of my own men" (Fawcett 1901: p. 412). Mercifully, the said C. Kannan did not engrave his name over the inscriptions, a fate which later befell *ARE* 123 / 1897 (estampage No. 4 in Fawcett 1901).
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⁵ Reprinted in Pl. 37 in this volume.
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(ii) *New discoveries at Edakal
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The proverbial silver lining in the dark cloud appeared in the form of the discovery, as a result of our intensive search in February 1996, of two more Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions ⁶ on the north rock wall of the cave, which had earlier escaped the attention of Fawcett. All the four short Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions appear to be contemporary and may be assigned to ca. 3rd century a.d. on palaeographic grounds. The occurrence of the expression *kaṭummiputa cēra* in one of the newly discovered inscriptions¹ proves that these are records of the times of the Cēra dynasty of the Caṅkam Age. The Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions from the Edakal cave have now been read and are included as Nos. **79-82** in the present *Corpus*.²
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⁶ Nos. *79* and *80*. The inscriptions were discovered by S. Swaminathan of our team.
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¹ In No. *80*.
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² Our expedition to Edakal also led to an improved interpretation of the Sanskrit inscription in the cave, a revised reading of the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscription read by Hultzsch and the decipherment of the second Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscription in the cave regarded as "unintelligible" by him (the latter two in Nos. *118 & 119* respectively). See the detailed report on the expedition to the Edakal cave (I. Mahadevan 1999: pp. 1-19.)
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Figure 1.3. Edakal: cave with prehistoric rock carvings. Photograph taken in 1894-96. The Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions (top left) are no longer extant.
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Figure 1.4. Kilavalavu: cave with Tamil-Brāhmī inscription. (The pillars are recent structures.)