Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s9.t1: 4.7.1 Buddhist occupation of the caves
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s9.t1
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4.7.1 Buddhist occupation of the caves
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To the earlier investigators of the Tamil caves, the Brāhmī inscriptions in characters resembling those of the Asokan edicts suggested Buddhist association even before the inscriptions could be properly understood. Venkayya traced the use of natural caves for religious purposes to the Buddhists "whose creed makes it binding on the monks to resort to out-of-the-way places". He compared the Tamil caves having stone beds and inscriptions with the rock-cut Buddhist caves of Western India. He also suggested that Asoka's Buddhist missionaries to Sri Lanka must have passed through the Tamil country and propagated their faith here too.¹
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¹ *ARE 1906-07*: paragraphs 1-5.
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Krishna Sastri compared the Tamil caves with very similar ones in Sri Lanka and proposed that the caves were successively occupied by aboriginal tribes in prehistoric times and then by the Buddhist monks, and in much later times, by the Jainas who carved the stone sculptures and Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions.²
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² H.Krishna Sastri 1919: pp. 330-332; also in *ARE 1908-09*: paragraph 7.
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Subrahmanya Aiyer drew attention to the parallelism in place names between Pañcapāṇḍava malai and Kaḻukumalai in the Tamil country and Pāṇḍava Pabbata and Gṛidhrakūṭa respectively, the latter two associated with incidents in the Buddha's life.³
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³ K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1924: pp. 278-281.
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However, the texts of the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions which have now been fully deciphered, do not reveal any internal evidence for associating the Buddhist faith with the Tamil caves. Some of the earlier readings and interpretations which seemingly provided evidence for the presence of Buddhism in the cave inscriptions have now been shown to be incorrect:
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(a) The expression **ū pā cā a ṉa** (*upaca-aṉ*) occurring at Kilavalavu and Kongarpuliyankulam was regarded by Subrahmanya Aiyer as the Tamil form of Skt. *upāsaka* from Prakrit, and interpreted to mean a 'lay devotee' as in Buddhist terminology.⁴ However, the same expression was earlier derived by Krishna Sastri from Skt. *upādhyāya* 'teacher.'¹ Though he did not interpret it, the expression means a 'preceptor' or 'spiritual teacher' in Jaina terminology. The latter interpretation has been adopted in this study.²
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⁴ *Ibid.* p. 294.
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¹ H. Krishna Sastri 1919: pp. 339-340.
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² See section **4.9.3(iii)**.
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(b) I had earlier read the words *mātavirai* 'great nun' and *tavira* 'monk' in the Alagarmalai cave inscriptions.³ As these terms can have Buddhist association, they have been considered as evidence for the presence of Buddhism in the Tamil caves. However, later field work has shown these to be incorrect readings respectively for *mattirai* ('Matirai') and *av[v]ir[u]-* ('those two') (Nos. **38** and **45**).
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³ I. Mahadevan, *Corpus of Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966* (1968): Nos. 33 and 41.