Dear Sudalaimuthu,
You ask for reactions. Mine is restricted to Kuṟuntokai 328 and Akanāṉūṟu 155.
The latter poem does indeed mention Pāṇāṭu (or pāṇāṭu), but as far as I can see the context does not provide any information about its position on the map of South India.
The case of Kuṟuntokai 328 is more complicated. It mentions a battle between the inhabitants of Kuṟumpūr, the Vicciyar, and the vēntar, or a king, or all the kings, of the great dynasties. I have not been
able to locate the Vicciyar. However, a Vicikkō, or “Vicci king” is mentioned in Puṟanāṉūṟu 200,8 and a Vicci in Patiṟṟuppattu, Patikam 9, 4 (p. 384).
The second part of Kuṟ. 328 reads:
alarē
vilkeḻu tāṉai vicciyar perumakaṉ
vēntaroṭu poruta ñāṉṟaip pāṇar
pulinōkkuṟaḻnilai kaṇṭa
kalikeḻu kuṟumpūr ārppiṉum peritē.
Eva Wilden offers the following translation:
[The] gossip is louder than the roaring of bustling Kuṟumpūr, which has seen [kaṇṭa] the posture [nilai] of bards [pāṇar], resembling [uṟaḻ] tigers [puli] (exchanging) looks [nōkku],
at a time when the great son of the Vicciyar with the bow-armed army fought with the kings [vēṇṭar].
As Wilden admits in the notes to this translation she herself could not make sense of the text. The translation is the outcome of consultations with Gopal Iyer.
In her edition Wilden has collected the variant readings of all the manuscripts and editions available. Unfortunately, she does not do anything with this material. For pulinōkkuṟaḻnilai (puli, “tiger”, nōkku,
“look, gaze”, uṟaḻ, “resembling”, nilai, “posture” (and many other meanings, from the verb nil- “to stand, remain, stop”)) there are two interesting variants, puli-nēr-kuṟaḻ-nilai
and puli-nēr-kuṟaḻaṉ-nilai. kuṟaḻaṉ in the latter may well stand for kuṟal̥aṉ, “dwarf”. The following is a rough paraphrase:
The gossip (about our love affair) is louder than that in Kuṟumpūr produced by the bards on the day of the battle between the Vicciyar with the great kings, which they (the bards)
considered a case (nilai, but compare Skt nyāya) of a dwarf taking on (nēr, see DED 3132) a tiger.
I admit that all this is not really an answer to your question.
Herman
According to Lewis Rice, Lokavibhāga, a Jain Sanskrit work, possibly translated from Prakrit into Sanskrit, says it was copied in Śaka 380 (458 CE) in the
22nd year of Siṃhavarman, the lord of Kāñchi, by the Jain Muni Sarvanandin in the village named Pāṭalika in the Pāṇa-rāṣṭra. According to Rice (EI, vol.14, p. 334), "Pāṭalika, the village in which Sarvanandin made his copy, may be Pāṭalīpura, in
the South Arcot District. The Periya-purāṇam makes it the seat of a large Jaina monastery in the 7th century. Pāṇarāṣhṭra is no doubt the territory of the Bāṇa kings."
The village called Pāṭalika has been usually associated with Tiruppāṭirippuliyūr, a suburb of Cuddalore on the Tamil Nadu coast. Tamil
Pātiri is the same as Pāṭali in Sanskrit. But we have another village called today as Pāṭirāppuliyūr (near Mailam) approximately 60 km to the northwest.
Pātirai in Tamil is a variant of Pātiri. Thus the present form Pātirāppuliyūr could represent an ancient form Pātiraippuliyūr. This means Pāṭalika could be Pātirāppuliyūr too. Which one was it really?
Now we know that the ca. 6th century Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscription (Early Tamil Epigraphy, 2003, pp. 471 and 629), which mentions the name of a Jain teacher from Pāṇātu, is at Paṟaiyaṉpaṭṭu
near Avalūrpēṭṭtai and about 68 km to the northwest of Pātirāppuliyūr. Kuṟuntokai 328 mentions a village called Kuṟumpūr which was probably close to the territory of the Pāṇar, where a battle was being fought. I think the village of Kuṟumpūr approximately
68 km north of Pātirāppuliyūr and 13 km north of Vandavasi is probably the one mentioned in the poem. The attached Figure 1 shows the locations of Pātirāppuliyūr, Paṟaiyaṉpaṭṭu, and Kuṟumpūr.
The attached picture shows the locations of Jain temples near the north central Tamil Nadu. Looking at the density of Jain sites, it is clear Pātirāppuliyūr is right in the middle of them.
But the Tiruppāṭirippuliyūr (Cuddalore) area hardly has any Jain sites. Certainly, what the Google map gives is the current picture. But the distribution of early Tamil inscriptions (2nd century BC- 6th century CE and most of them Jain)
shows a similar concentration in this area as shown by Early Tamil Epigraphy Map 1 on p.34.
Based on this, I propose that the location of Pāṭalika from where Lokavibhāga was copied is present day Pātirāppuliyūr and that Pāṇāṭu mentioned in Akam 155 and the Paṟaiyaṉpaṭṭu inscription
and the Pāṇa-rāṣṭra mentioned in Lokavibhāga should be located in the general area where Pātirāppuliyūr, Paṟaiyaṉpaṭṭu, and Kuṟumpūr are located.
While the area was known as Pāṇāṭu or Pāṇa-rāṣṭra from the time of Akam 155 to the 6th century, the Pāṇar rulers might have moved further north extending from northern Tamil
Nadu into Telugu and Kannada regions by the 6th century.
I welcome comments.
Thanks in advance
Regards,
Palaniappan