A stone slab with a Tamil inscription has been discovered at Kottarapatti near Pathalapettai in Tiruchi district apparently while cleaning a pond.
The epigraph registers the digging of an irrigation channel by Manasaya Dandanayakar, a government official of Rajendra Chola III during the 3rd regnal year of the king at the eastern division of Chenthamaraikkanna Nallur. The inscription notes that the channel was flowing towards the north of the village irrigating the surrounding lands.
A couple of residents of Pathalapettai, M. Murugesan and K. Tamilselvan, had informed K. Balakrishnan, Principal, Bharathi Matriculation Higher Secondary School, who is also an ornithologist, of this stone slab during one of his visits to the village for bird watching.
Subsequently, R. Kalaikkovan, Director, Dr. M. Rajamanikkanar Centre for Historical Research, and M. Nalini, Head, Department of History, Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, visited the place along with Pulavar P. Tamilakan to decipher the inscription.
Dr. Kalaikkovan, in a press release said, the stone slab measuring 48 centimetres in width and 69 cm in height was found near a barren land. The inscription is engraved in Tamil and has 10 lines.
Another slab with a trident symbol was found half buried nearby and was probably a boundary stone of a land gifted to a Siva temple. The presiding deity of the Perumal temple at Thiruvellarai is mentioned in inscriptions as Chenthamaraikkannan.
Many villages on either side of the Cauvery were named after this deity in the Chola period and are mentioned in the records as Chenthamaraikkanna Nallur. References are found at Thiruppainnili and Srirangam.
“Though hundreds of Chola inscriptions are found in and around Tiruchi, inscriptions of Rajendra Chola III, the last king of the Chola dynasty, are rare to find. In that aspect, this discovery gains importance and strengthens the theory that the Chola hegemony continued to exist in Tiruchi district despite the inroads made by the Hoysalas,” Dr. Kalaikkovan said.
