Thanks for the pictures. 

There is no doubt. It is cuppaḷam! I think 'keśavaṉ' scratched on the top is in Malayalam script.

You are also right about mukuñcatu and kurentam/kurantam. This alternation suggests a location in Kanyakumari district was more likely. These variations do not affect our earlier understanding of the colophon.

If cuppaḷam indeed stood for the place name uppaḷam, it is like finding a PDr fossil in the 19th century confirming the PDr reconstruction!  We may have to look for more contextual evidence to confirm that cuppaḷam indeed stood for the place name uppaḷam.

Regards,
Palaniappan

-----Original Message-----
From: Marco Franceschini <franceschini.marco@fastwebnet.it>
To: Indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: Sat, Nov 23, 2013 11:26 am
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] unidentified Grantha manuscript

Many thanks to all the colleagues who helped identifying the text!

I've uploaded in DropBox some pictures of the manuscript, for those of you who are interested in having a look at it:


As you will see, the colophon (found in [66v], added by a second hand) is uninked: I hope the pictures are good enough to read it.

Some remarks about the points that have been raised (but please remember that I'm far from being an expert of Tamil script, so you'd better check the readings yourself!):

- cuppaḷam / uppaḷam: the word is found in the final colophon [66v2] and in the final rubric of the Arkāṇipāṭha [43v6]. In both places the word is written in Tamil script: therefore, if cuppaḷam stands (erroneously) for uppaḷam, the confusion did not arise because of the graphic similarity between cu and u, since Tamil cu/su and u are graphically quite different.

- mukiñcatu / mutiñcatu: my transcription was wrong, the manuscript reads mukuñcatu [66v3]

- kurantam / kirantam: I'm almost sure that the manuscript actually reads āraṇakurantam in [66v2] and āraṇakurentam in [43v6]

- the word kesava[ṉ?] is scratched also on the upper wooden cover

Coming to Asko Parpola's questions, this is the first manuscript of the Jaiminīya Sāmaveda I find in the UL collection, but at present I've catalogued only one fourth of the 40 Grantha manuscripts that are part of the collection. I'll let you know in case I find more.
As for the provenance of this manuscript, I think that the question will be soon (and more conveniently) answered by Camillo Formigatti, who knows far better than me about the history of the UL collection.

Best wishes,

Marco Franceschini
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