Studies in Cola History and Administration c14.38

c14.38

Maṇavil.—This place formed part of the Maṇavir-kōṭṭam, a subdivision of Jayaṅgoṇḍa-śōlamaṇḍalam, which was the name given to Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam rather early in the period of Cōḷa expansion. Of this subdivision, Hultzsch at first observed: ‘Possibly Maṇavir-kōṭṭam is a mere corruption of Maṇayirkōṭṭam, and Maṇayil stands for Maṇ-eyil, ‘mud fort’, which might be a fuller form of Eyil, a village in the South Arcot District, which seems to have given its name to Eyirkōṭṭam.’* When, later, Hultzsch met with the phrase: ‘eyirkōṭṭattu nagaraṅāñcīpuram,’ stating that Kāñcī was a city in the Eyirkōṭṭam, he felt the need for revising his opinion and remarked:† “Eyil, after which the District of Eyirkōṭṭam was called, must be distinct from the distant village of Eyil in the South Arcot District, with which I proposed to identify it on a former occasion. Perhaps the term Eyil, i.e., ‘the fort’, refers to Kāñcīpuram itself.” It should be observed that while this latter identification of Eyil is unexceptionable, it does not appear so easy to follow Hultzsch in his speculations concerning Maṇavil. He puts forward two suggestions neither of which has received any support so far. He says that Maṇ-eyil might be a fuller form of ‘eyil;’ he also says that this fuller form might yield ‘Maṇayil’ and ‘Maṇavil’. All this seems very risky etymology. Moreover, Eyirkōṭṭam and Maṇaviṟkōṭṭam figure as two separate divisions among the twenty-four kōṭṭams attributed by tradition to Toṇṭaimaṇḍalam.* We have to remember that the ‘kōṭṭam,’ though it comprised further subdivisions called nāḍu, was rather a small administrative division. The only satisfactory method of identifying these divisions is to undertake an exhaustive study of the names of subdivisions and villages mentioned in the inscriptions as forming part of the kōṭṭam. With such complete lists before us, we can, with some confidence, proceed to fix the bounds of each kōṭṭam in terms of modern geography; and this because, in spite of a confusing recurrence of some village names in adjacent tracts, a skilful comparison of the data drawn from epigraphs with the present names of villages may be expected to lead to valuable results. Now the nāḍus and villages that appear in Cōḻa inscriptions as parts of Maṇaviṟkōṭṭam so far as I have been able to trace them from the texts of inscriptions are given in the Appendix to this study. It is remarkable that, some of the nāḍus in our list e. g., Puriśai, Pāśāli, Kaṇṟūr and Perumūr, figure also in the traditional list of nāḍus comprising the Maṇavūr-kōṭṭam; Maṇavilnāḍu, however, in which both Maṇavil and Arumbākkam were situated does not figure in it. Nevertheless it seems clear that our Maṇaviṟkōṭṭam must be the same as the Maṇavūr-kōṭṭam of tradition. In one inscription Maṇaviṟkōṭṭam is clearly called Teṇkarai-Maṇaviṟkōṭṭam †, and it must have been, wholly or in part, on the southern bank of some considerable river. The suggestion may be made that Maṇavil and Arumbākkam of the inscriptions are identical with the modern villages of Maṇappākkam and Arumbākkam in the Cheyyār and