History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c18.s2.39

c18.s2.39

In the poem *Nīlakēci* is said to have “gone to the great city of Kukkuṭa, and entered Camaṭaṇṭa”,⁴ where she found Pūraṇa’s monastery. Vāmanamuni, the commentator, gives no information about Camaṭaṇṭa, other than that it is the name of a town (*ūr*). The former place he ignores. In a footnote Professor Chakravarti states that Kukkuṭa- or Kōḷi-nagar is a name of Uraiyūr or Trichinopoly, but he gives no basis for this doubtful statement. The scenes of *Nīlakēci*’s other philosophical debates are all in Northern India, and we may infer that the author thought of Kukkuṭanagara as also situated in the north. The *Dhammapada Commentary* mentions a town called Kukkuṭavatī,⁵ elsewhere referred to as Kukkuṭa, somewhere in the Himālayan region, at a distance of 120 leagues from Sāvatthi. Perhaps Kukkuṭanagara was the town remembered by the Ājīvikas as the birthplace of Pūraṇa, since the Buddha is represented in the poem as meeting *Nīlakēci* in Kapilapura or Kapilavastu, the city of his birth. Camaṭaṇṭa, or Samaḍaṇḍa, may have been a near-by suburb or village.