Kaladi and Sankara

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

One can find many names consisting of the place name and the given name in
the list of Classical Tamil poets as well as the inscriptions. Consider
iLaiyAn2kuTi mARan2 mentioned earlier in the thread.

One can have the name like maturai mIn2AkSi even though there is no other
famous mIn2AkSi (except may be Houston's :-))

And there is no need to add any honorific suffixes to add to the name.
Consider the case of tirunAvukkaracu (a veLLALa) and appUti aTikaL (a
brahmin). appUti was such an ardent admirer of tirunAvukkaracu, he named all
his institutions after tirunAvukkaracu. He even named his sons after
tirunAvukkaracu. It was the oldest son mUtta tirunAvukkaracu who was bitten
by a snake and tirunAvukkaracu sang a hymn to bring him back to life. (In a
way, it was lthe reverse of the present situation where a non-brahmin is
admiring a brahmin.) But no place name was used in tirunAvukkaracu's case.
With respect to the other saint cuntarar, we find in SII 2, no. 65, tEvAram
singers named after ArUran2 along with those named after campantan2, and
tirunAvukkaraiyan2. Theoretically one can take ArUran2  to refer to ziva
also. But considering the presence of the names of other two saints, ArUran2
too probably referred to cuntarar. So, one need not have kAlaTimun2ivan2 or
any similar form. A form like kAlaTiyAn2 would be fine too. It is fortunate
that we have such an explicit identification in the case of Sankara.

The reason for explicitly qualifying Sankara with kAlaTi could be the
following. The name caGkaran2 is a popular one in the tirunelvEli district
among brahmins and non-brahmins. The name refers to ziva at caGkaran2kOvil, a
popular place of pilgrimage in the tirunelvEli region. (I do not have any
epigraphic data on the temple.) It is possible that the father of
kAlaTiccaGkaran2 wanted to indicate that the boy was being named after the
human Sankara of kAlaTi and not the divine Sankara at caGkaran2kOvil.

Regards
S. Palaniappan