South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13.s1.113

c13.s1.113

44. Tribhuvanam or Tiruppuvanam.—This is a place in the Tanjore district about three miles or a little more from Kumbakonam and somewhat less than a mile from Tiruviḍaimarudūr. This ought not to be confounded with the Tiruppūvaṇam in the Madura district on the Madura-Ramnad line of the South Indian Railway. It is popularly known by the Tamil name Tiruppuvanam, and is given a fanciful origin that it was so called because, as the story has it, Varaguṇa Pāṇḍyan, whom the ghost of a Brahman he put to death was always haunting, turned back there to see whether it was still following him after leaving the shrine at Tiruvaḍaimarudūr. The duplicate of inscriptions in the temple of the Chola emperor, Kulottunga III puts it beyond doubt that the place was called Tribhuvana-Virēśvara from one of his titles Tribhuvanavīra, which has been contracted into Tribhuvanam with its Tamil equivalent Tiruppuvanam; the name at any rate has nothing whatever to do with the story.