the word "potiyil" inside MaNimEkalai (Was Re: Chih Sheng (688-740 AD))

Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR
Tue Feb 23 20:58:57 UTC 1999


A 01:08 23/02/99 +0100, Petr Mares a écrit :
>
>My question not related to Zhi Sheng is:
>Does the Manimekhalai or quotations from Ilambodhiyar mentions
>Malaya or is there anything about La.Nka there?
>What about Silappadhikaram?
>

This is not exactly an answer to the question
as it was put by Petr Mares, but I believe it is not out of place
to examine precisely how the word "potiyil" is used inside
the buddhist epic maNimEkalai, where it appears 12 times
and seems to have two different meanings:
 (A) in 9 occasions it designates a public place (or a public hall?)
 (B) in 3 occasions it refers to Mount Potiyil

the 9 (A) occurences are:
 1-58: taN maNal pantarum tAzhtaru potiyilum
 20-15: potiyil nIGkiya pozhutil cen2Ru
 20-30: mAtavar iTaGkaLum man2Ramum potiyilum
 20-79: maRRavaL irunta man2Rap potiyiluL
 21-6: maintaRku uRRatum man2Rap potiyil
 21-37: poyyA nAvoTu ip potiyilil poruntiya
 21-122: potiyilum man2Ramum poruntupu nATi
 28-59: man2Ramum potiyilum cantiyum catukkamum
 28-66: cAlaiyum kUTamum taman2iya potiyilum
 
the 3 (B) occurrences are:
 15-82: ten2 ticaip potiyil Or ciRRiyARu aTaikarai
 17-24: ten2 ticaip potiyil kANiya vantEn2
 20-22: mazhai cUzh kuTumip potiyil kun2Rattu

It is possible for me to extract an english translation
for these 12 passages from the Danielou-(T.V.Gopal-Iyer)
"joint translation" ;-)
but I am sure it would be better to ask S.Palaniappan
to provide his own translation
 (it is always a pleasure to see his very precise renderings)
and to give his comment

In the case of CilappatikAram, the situation is different
because meaning (B) seems to be more frequent than meaning (A).

This will be my small contribution to that long and interesting thread.

-- Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD (Paris)





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