Dancers: viRali, basavi, devadasi

[Lakshmi Srinivas]

--- "N. Ganesan" <naga_ganesan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Rajaraja Cholan I, convened 400 best dancers from
> his
> kingdom and they were attached to his temple in
> Tanjore
> around 1000 CE. All their names are recrded on that
> temple's walls. Note that all their names start as
> "nakkan2" (< Skt. nagna 'naked'), not a single
> devadasi
> without nakkan2 in her name!

Dr NG,

A side remark.

According to the MTL, 'Nakkan' seems to have had
various meanings:

1. naked person (tiruvAymozi 10.8, 12000 paDi Com.)
"ammaNamAyuLLavan tikamparanAkaiyAlE nakkanenRu pErAY"
= "the naked person is dubbed nakkan since he's a
digambara"
2. arhat (tiruviLaiyATalpurANam, pANTi. 10)
3. Siva. (tEvAram, 619,2)
This is the commonest sense of "nakkan", "nakkapirAn"
in the Vaishnava corpus also. Also, "nakkapirAntamar"
= saivites. This corpus is temporally close to
Rajaraja.
4. Ancient title of dancing girls attached to temples.
There's an epigraphic ref (SII, ii, 261) quoted in the
MTL: "ittaLi nakkan cOzakulacuntarikkup paGku onRum"
which may be translated as "one share to nakkan
cOzakulacuntari of this temple".

Hope this helps,

LS

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