Mangulam or Mankulam is a village in

Madurai district Madurai District is one of the 38 districts of the state of Tamil Nadu in southeastern India., United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency The city of Madurai serves as the district headquarters. It houses the famous Sri Meenakshi ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

, India. It is located from

Madurai Madurai ( , , ), formerly known as Madura, is a major city in the States and union territories of India, Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Madurai District, which is ...

. The inscriptions discovered in the region are the earliest Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions.

History

A hill southeast of the village known as Mangulam hill or Kalugumalai (eagle hill) or Ovamalai, is where

Tamil Jain Tamil Jains (Tamil language, Tamil Samaṇar, from Prakrit ''Śramaṇa, samaṇa'' "wandering renunciate") are ethnic-Tamils from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, who practice Jainism (Tamil ). The Tamil Jain is a microcommunity of around 85,0 ...

monks lived in the caves during when their religion flourished in the ancient Tamil country. They converted the caves into their ''Palli'' (monastery) and lived here from 3 BCE to the 9th century CE.

Mangulam inscriptions

Mangulam inscriptions were discovered by Robert Sewell in the caves of the hill in 1882. This was the earliest finding of such kind of inscriptions. In 1906, Indian epigraphist V. Venkayya tried to read the inscriptions and found that it similar to the

Brahmi script Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as ...

in Ashokan edicts, he thought that the inscriptions were in

Pali language Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a classical Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravād ...

. In 1919, epigraphist H. Krishna Sastri identified few Tamil words in the inscriptions. In 1924, K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyar discovered that inscriptions are in Tamil with some

Prakrit Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...

loan words in the Brahmi script and concluded that script is Tamil-Brahmi. In 1965, Iravatham Mahadevan recorded the inscriptions in the caves and dated it to the late 3rd century BCE. There are five caves in the hill of which six inscriptions are found in four caves. These were inscribed during

Sangam period The Sangam literature ( Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam''), historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' ( Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cāṉṟōr ceyyuḷ''), connote ...

, hence it is considered one of the important inscriptions in Tamil Nadu. Archeologists found

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s, sling stones and an ancient burial site during the excavation in the region. In 2007, Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department excavated the ruins of the Jain prayer halls of Sangam period. The inscriptions are among the protected monuments in Tamil Nadu by the

Archaeological Survey of India The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is an Indian government agency that is responsible for archaeological research and the conservation and preservation of cultural historical monuments in the country. It was founded in 1861 by Alexander ...

Content

The inscriptions mentions that workers of Neṭuñceḻiyaṉ I, a

Pandyan The Pandya dynasty (), also referred to as the Pandyas of Madurai, was an ancient Tamil dynasty of South India, and among the four great kingdoms of Tamilakam, the other three being the Pallavas, the Cholas and the Cheras. Existing sinc ...

king of Sangam period, () made stone beds for Jain monks. It further details the name of worker for whom he made stone bed. For example, an inscription shows that Kaṭalaṉ Vaḻuti, a worker (- accountant; he was also related family) of Neṭuñceḻiyaṉ, made a stone bed for the Jain monk Nanta-siri Kuvaṉ.

References

External links

* {{Madurai district Villages in Madurai district Archaeological sites in Tamil Nadu Jain rock-cut architecture Tamil Brahmi script Hills of Tamil Nadu Caves of Tamil Nadu 2nd-century BC Jain temples