Date of Bhavatr āta

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

I have checked Asko Parpola's 1983 article, "The Passages of the Jaiminīya Śrautasūtra Dealing with the Agnicayana, together with Bhavatrāta's Commentary," in Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (1983).

Parpola says, "In the introductory verses, Bhavatrāta mentions his compassionate father Mātṛdatta, who was a trivedin. Daṇḍin, who lived around A.D. 700 (see Kunjan Pillai 1954, 23), speaks in very much the same terms of his friend, the great Vedic scholar Mātṛdatta, whose father and son were both called Bhavarāta (sic), the former a Kalpasūtraṭīkākāra from Kerala (Avantisundarīkathā, edited by Kunjan Pillai, 1954, p.13, II.21ff.)."

It is obvious that the names indicated by Dandin are 

Bhavarāta - grandfather
Mātṛdatta -father, the friend of Daṇḍin
Bhavarāta - son

I have also looked at Asko Parpola's 1984 paper, "On the Jaiminīya and Vādhūla Traditions of South India and the Pāṇḍu/Pāṇḍava Problem." This paper provides more details regarding Bhavatrāta, the commentator of Jaiminīya Śrautasūtra. In this paper we find that Bhavatrāta's father;s name was Mātṛdatta and his grandfather's name was Hastiśarman. Hastiśarman came to Kerala from the village of Vasiṣṭhakuṭi.

So we have the following geneology given by Bhavatrāta.

Hastiśarman - grandfather
Mātṛdatta - father
Bhavatrāta - son

I am surprised that scholars so readily identified Bhavarāta, the grandfather, with Hastiśarman and Bhavarāta, Hastiśarman's grandson, with Bhavatrāta. They have assumed that Hastiśarman changed his name to Bhavatrāta on moving to Kerala!

Given the appearance of Vasiṣṭhakuṭi only in a late 14th century inscription while all earlier inscriptions only call it Tiṭṭaikuṭi,  I do not consider the identification of the author of the commentary on Jaiminīya Śrautasūtra with a person mentioned by Daṇḍin is justified. ((There is an inscription by Kumāra Kampaṇa of Vijayanagara of ca. 1373 CE which refers to the village as Tiṭṭaikuṭi and not as Vasiṣṭhakuṭi.) Of course, if we find any inscription attesting to the occurrence of the name Vasiṣṭakuṭi earlier in the epigraphical record, then we will have to revise this conclusion. 

This suggests that any conclusions regarding the date of the movement of Sāma Vedic traditions or brahmins from the Cōḻa country to Kerala based on Bhavatrāta's commentary need to be revised despite whatever legends that might prevail among Namboothiri families regarding Bhavatrāta.

Regards,
Palaniappan

On Jul 9, 2012, at 11:57 PM, Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote:

> In my earlier post, the name 'Tirucciṛṛampalaccaturvetimaṅkalam' should actually read 'Tirucciṟṟampalaccaturvetimaṅkalam'. I regret the typographical error.
> 
> Regards,
> Palaniappan
> 
> On Jul 4, 2012, at 6:30 PM, Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote:
> 
>> Dear Indologists,
>> 
>> In his article, 'Codification of Vedic domestic ritual in Kerala: Pārvaṇa-sthālīpāka', in the International Symposium, The Book , Romania, 20-24 September 2010,  Asko Parpola writes, "In any case, the Nampūtiris were in Kerala in the 7th century CE, when the grandfather of the great Jaiminīya commentator Bhavatrāta migrated to Kerala from the village of Vasiṣṭhakuṭi (modern Tiṭṭaguḍi near Vṛddhācalam) in the Cōḻa kingdom (cf. PARPOLA 1984)." (Unfortunately the reference PARPOLA 1984 seems to be missing.)
>> 
>> I am puzzled by this reference. because the name Vasiṣṭhakuṭi makes its appearance for the first time in a ca. 1398 CE  inscription of the Viruppaṇṇa Uṭaiyār (SII 8, No. 286) which mentions "Śri Vasiṣṭhakuṭi āṉa Vidyāraṇyapurattu...". Earlier inscriptions only mention the brahmadeyam Tiṭṭaikuṭi aka  Tirucciṛṛampalaccaturvetimaṅkalam (or its variants). The earlier inscriptions cover several Cōḷa and Pāṇṭiya inscriptions.  It was probably Viruppaṇṇa who renamed Tiṭṭakuṭi as Vidyāraṇyapuram in honor of the Mādhava-Vidyāraṇya.  For a long time I had assumed Vasiṣṭhakuṭi  was a slightly earlier awkward attempt at Sanskritization of Tamil Tiṭṭaikuṭi. After all the earlier inscriptions could have rendered the name Vasiṣṭhakuṭi since these inscriptions used a mixture of both Tamil and Grantha script characters. I cannot think of any reason why the inscriptions would not have used the name Vasiṣṭhakuṭi.
>> 
>> Can somebody with access to Bhavatrāta's work tell me if he refers to Vasiṣṭhakuṭi and Cōḻa kingdom in his work? Given that there was no Cōḻa kingdom in the area at that time, is the ca. 700 date for Bhavatrāta confirmed? 
>> 
>> Thanks in advance.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Palaniappan
> 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20120714/1a37608b/attachment.htm>