Local Government in Ancient India c15.3

c15.3

Villages had not only their public halls and temples, Maṭhas, and monasteries, but also schools of learning. One of the most interesting of such schools is mentioned in no. 202 of 1912 (*Mad. Ep. Rep.*, 1912–13, p. 110), which registers the generous gift of a donor who assigned some land for the maintenance of a grammar-hall in the temple at Tiruvorraiyūr called ‘*Vyākaraṇa-dāna-vyākhyāna-maṇḍapa*, for the upkeep of the teachers and pupils who should study grammar there, and for the worship of the god Vyākaraṇa-dāna-Perumāl (i. e. Siva), who in that very *maṇḍapa* was pleased to appear before Pāṇini-Bhagavat for fourteen continuous days and to teach him the first fourteen aphorisms (with which Pāṇini’s grammar begins) known as Māheśvara Sūtras’. This famous school of grammar is referred to in other later records. No. 110 of 1912, assigned to the thirteenth year of Sundara-Pāṇḍya-Deva III, registers an agreement by which the residents of Pular-Kottan submit to a special tax levied in the northern and southern divisions of Tiruvorraiyūr for maintaining this historic Maṇḍapa and other similar buildings of the temple. No. 201 of 1912 in the thirty-eighth year of Kulottuṅga Cola III, registers the gift by a private person of a village for the upkeep of the same grammar-hall, and refers to the king’s declaration making the village rent-free. No. 120 of 1912 again registers the king’s gift of a village and some gold ornaments to the god Vyākaraṇa-dāna-Perumāl at the instance of a female devotee, the king being Kulottuṅga Cola III. One of the temple priests was also called Vyākaraṇa-dāna-bhaṭṭa after the god Śiva, who ‘gave’ grammar to Pāṇini.