A continuation post to Kodumanal…..
10th October
2016
During
my first visit to Arachalur I could not see this Isai Inscriptions / kalvettukal and Jain
monks beds. This time we are lucky to see that. Even though there is an ASI
board erected on the main road, it is about 2 km from the natural cave. The
cave was also used as smanar beds.
Prof. S. Raju, an epigraphist of Erode and the former Head in
Thanjavur Tamil University, discovered these inscriptions in the early 1960s. He
says they were carved by wandering Jain monks, who came south during Chandra
Gupta Maurya's time. The
place is not much protected by the ASI out
of three, only one is in readable conditions. The inscriptions are carved in
Tamil Brahmi.
The inscriptions are tala notes (adavu) that a Bharatnatyam dancer dances to. It has five lines and as many rows, resembling a five-row - five-column matrix. It has been arranged in such a way that read either from left to right or top to bottom it reads the same. It is a palindrome as well.
Close by is the third inscription, which is also in Tamil Brahmi.
It talks about the person who chiseled the above-mentioned lines.
--- OM SHIVAYA NAMA---
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