uraga and AlavAy

[Michael Rabe]

For the record, I wish to applaud the rigor and clarity of Sudalaimuthu
Palaniappan's discourse on the snake-related names of Madurai ten days ago.
He convinces me that the uragapura of the Gadval plates (674) and
Kalidasa's earlier reference to a _pura_ named _uraga_ may well be very
different places, and the later MIGHT well be Madurai.
And of course it is, in the sense that no other city can be so closely
identified with Pandyan rule.

I would only caution a need for, or confess a personal preference for
scrupulously historicized conjecture, over reified claims for timeless
verities.  In other words, I put greater stock in the indology of a Sheldon
Pollack than a Stella Kramrisch, because there is no  such  [one] thing, as
THE Hindu Temple, nor even a single-definition, one-size-fits-all-puras
_Sanskrit Cosmopolis_ with identical attributes from Kushan Mathura to
Khmer Angkor.*

* Cf. Sheldon I. Pollock, _The Sanskrit Cosmopolis, A.D. 300-1300:
Tans-culturation, Vernacularization, and the Question of Ideology,_ in The
Ideology and Status of Sanskrit in South and Southeast Asia (Leiden: Brill,
1996): 197-247

This in a final response to a message dated Sun, 2 May 1999 01:21:28 EDT:
S. Palaniappan quotes me as saying:

>> But it is unwarranted, I believe, to ascribe a
>>  snake-related name to Madurai on the basis of the Kalidas reference

adding,
>Of course, it is warranted on the basis of Tamil traditions described in
>nampi's (13th century) and paraJcOti's (16th century) texts...

I certainly have no clue as to how much earlier said traditions do go back,
but again, caution is in order given other cases where, for example. a
puranic myth of Demon Bali's city being destroyed by the sea at The Seven
Pagodas/ Mahabalipuram arises in a sthalapurana said to derive from  the
Markandeya Purana, I believe, after historical memory of Mahamallapuram's
true patronymic founding (in celebration of the 642 conquest of VAtApi) was
forgotten.

Hope this clarifies my approach,
Michael Rabe
SAIC/SXU/Chicago

[Another epigraphic query follows]