The Death of a Friend: Companionship,Loyalty and Affiliation in Chola South India

Background: The Discourses on Friendship

Before taking up our two cases in greater detail, it will be worth considering the general shape of discourses on friendship current in South India by the tenth century. Putting aside literary representations of male companionship found in the celebrated Caṅkam literature (dealt with in this issue by Selby), or even more prevalently in the influential epic traditions which were no doubt in circulation from the first centuries of the common era, we might expect elaborations on friendship to occur in two separate discursive/theoretical arenas: those of ethics and aesthetics. The theorization for friendship in the latter sphere, as Whitney Cox has recently shown, is curiously absent. ³ The literature enumerating the ambit of aestheticized emotions (rasa) and the affective states (bhāva) on which they were based, beginning with the Nāṭyaśāstra itself, overwhelmingly ignores the emotions of friendship as a discrete category. Only a single later theorist, Rudraṭa, attempts to expand the Nāṭyaśāstra’s list to include an aestheticized emotion whose affective basis (bhāva) was friendly affection or sneha. Not only is this line of thinking ignored by the tradition, but, as Cox has pointed out, a similar theorization is resoundingly refuted by the influential Abhinavagupta, writing in the first decades of the eleventh century, who argues explicitly that the apparently discrete emotions of friendship should instead be dissolved into other categories, most notably the highly valourized rasas of heroism (vīra) and sexual love (śṛṅgāra). ⁴ So the realm of aesthetics, which provides us with some of our most refined theoretical approaches to emotional dispositions, their causes and representations, has little to say on the topic of friendship.

This is not the case, however, in the field of political ethics, or nīti. Friendship is a distinct and prominent theme in the collections of maxims or short poems on proper conduct that were composed and assembled in the first centuries of the Common Era, presumably in order to instruct young men of noble birth in the ways of acting morally and successfully in the newly emergent spheres of public life, which were centred around royal and local aristocratic courts. Bhartṛhari’s Sanskrit Śatakatrayam is perhaps the most well known of these collections, and may well have circulated in Southern India, but we know of several Tamil works compiled along similar lines. Most prominent among them are the Tirukkuṟaḷ (c. 500 AD) and the Nālaṭiyār (675–700 AD). ⁵ These treatises, composed on the eve or early stages of the rise of the new political and agrarian formations during Pallava times, are in many ways similar in their organization and themes to treatises in Sanskrit like the Śatakatrayam. They were most broadly organized into what was known as the three-fold path, or trivarga, but within this framework contained numerous discrete issues for collective and ongoing ethical consideration and reflection in the form of a written but open-ended discourse. Similar to these were more focused treatises on nīti, like the Sanskrit verse text Nītivākyāmṛta composed at the court of a Rāṣṭrakūṭa feudatory. These texts, with their clusters of thematically organized verse-maxims, mark a new ethical dispensation for elites in South India, one in which one’s moral education took shape in part through the study, exchange and reflection upon these exchanged verses in the context of courts and rural assemblies. ⁶ The Tirukkuṟaḷ and Nālaṭiyār both have distinct chapters or verse clusters on the theme of friendship and its importance in public life. They contain sections on the general qualities of friendship (naṭpu); the testing of friendship (naṭpārāytal); old [friendships] (paḻaimai); forgiving faults in friendship (naṭpiṟ piḻaipoṟuttal); friendship with the wicked (tīnaṭpu) and spurious friendships (kūṭānaṭpu). Overall, these texts see friendship as closely related to another theme which was a favourite for exhortation—what may be called ‘good association’, or keeping the company of the virtuous. In these treatises, friends and virtuous companions were deemed necessary for living well in the world—all of these treatises presume that friendship with the good brought with it material, mental and moral well-being. In the words of Nālaṭiyār, ‘friendship with the virtuous is of the finest excellence, and bears abundant fruit like a rain-cloud’. ⁷ The association of friendship with worldly benefit and succor is ubiquitous in these treatises, and while such conceptions of friendship would be at least partly disqualified by their association with personal benefit and self-interest for some modern commentators, the treatises suggest that the affective contours of friendship in early medieval South India were deeply entwined with ideas of the good life that included a unity of moral and material well-being.

The sustained consideration of friendship in these treatises was broadly contemporaneous with the emergence of new forms of sociability across various social locales in South India. The period between the fifth and eighth centuries saw widespread political, agricultural and religious development in the major river deltas of the southern peninsula. The new powerful kingdoms of the Pallavas and Pandyas consciously adopted Sanskritic courtly idioms and implemented courtly protocols that had become widespread throughout the subcontinent from Gupta times, even as Tamil literary forms saw a shift and expansion of their contours. At the same time, political elites funded householder communities of intellectuals and religious specialists as well as commissioning stone, monumental temples for the gods Viṣṇu and Śiva throughout the Tamil countryside. The forms of sociability that emerged around these institutions—coalescing around court and temple—were profound and far-reaching, and can be read productively with the discourses on friendship in texts like the Tirukkuṟaḷ and Nālaṭiyār. The repeated emphasis not only on companionship with the virtuous and eminent, but advice for the discrimination in the acquisition of friends, the consideration of duration and intensity in the estimation of trust given to friends, as well as what might be called the praise of ‘friendly virtues’ such as loyalty and forbearance, particularly in times of adversity—all suggest the new societies of service and devotion that court and temple engendered, in which reciprocal relations of trust and assistance were highly valued. The heightened prominence of the theme of friendship in these discourses, in other words, was because ‘friends’ were now deemed indispensable and necessary for negotiating these social spaces.

A distinctive feature of these domains of sociability was their association with new conceptions of immanent lordliness and a host of related affective vocabularies—grace, favour, service, devotion and loyalty. Much work has been done on the ways in which such concepts of lordship sustained social, agrarian and political hierarchies. What is less appreciated (and yet may help us in understanding the hegemony of such social relations) are the ways in which the practices of lordship also fostered a vast array of graded hierarchies and ‘lateral’ social bonds that had their own often very powerful affective dynamics. Indeed, it is these lateral bonds and graded affiliations that made medieval courts and devotional communities such powerful social institutions. And it is in this context that friendship and companionship took on important new valences in early medieval South India, through what we might conceive, from the vantage point of affect itself, as a sort of triangulation of emotive disposition. That is to say, these relationships were often predicated on collective and mutual affiliations to other, superordinate entities through court or military service on the one hand or religious mendicancy or worship at temples, on the other hand. The treatment of friendship in manuals such as the Tirukkuṟaḷ and Nālaṭiyār takes on significance here, as does the repeated emphasis in ‘devotional’ literatures on the collectivity of the community of devotees. Collective hierarchization and service formed a powerful pretext for the development of new types of lateral bonds. In the following pages, I will take up two cases from Chola-period sources that have striking resonance with one another.

The Prince and His Retainer

Sometime in the year 948 AD, a young prince (piḷḷaiyār) of the Chola family by the name of Rājāditya, son of the ambitious king Parāntaka I (907–955), who was garrisoned in newly acquired territories to protect the northern marches of a fledgling Chola imperium, led a contingent of troops against a collection of feudal militias and royal soldiers assembled by the mighty Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa III (939–967), at a place called Takkōḷam, 6 miles southeast of Arkoṇam in modern-day North Arcot district (see Figure 1). According to contemporary records, during the battle, Rājāditya was struck while seated atop his war elephant by an arrow from the bow of a young underlord of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king, Prince Būtuga of the Western Gaṅga family. ⁸ He died instantly and the Chola army was routed. Rājāditya’s death—and the defeat of the Chola garrison at Takkōḷam—signalled a downward turn in fortunes for the newfound ambitions of an old regional family, the Cholas. It reversed the substantial political gains made by Rājāditya’s father, Parāntaka I (907–955), during the previous decades, and ushered in a period of multiple and perhaps even disputed accessions. ⁹ The ambitions of the family would not be fully recovered for three generations when, under the leadership of Rājarāja I (985–1014), the Cholas would rise to even greater eminence in the political landscape of South India. Yet as much as the prince Rājāditya’s death dashed the family’s regional ambitions, it also seems to have been consequential for the court itself. His death was deeply mourned and unusually commemorated in the Chola family—with Chola praśastis nearly seventy years later mentioning the event. ¹⁰

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Figure 1.

Source: Author’s own.

In this vein, a bilingual Sanskrit and Tamil record, incised some 10 years after Rājāditya’s death (and now found on a slab in the floor of a Śiva temple at Tiruvoṟṟiyūr)—just a few miles from the battlefield of Takkōḷam—is of particular interest. Dated in the twentieth year of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa III’s reign, the record commemorates the gift of a hundred pieces of gold to a local agrahāram by one Caturānana Paṇḍita, the chief abbot of a Kālamukha Śaiva monastery at the place, the interest on which was to fund the performance of a special pūjā to Śiva on the occasion of his natal constellation. ¹¹ Caturānana Paṇḍita, the inscription tells us, was the initiation (dīkṣā) name given to a man with another identity. In his former life, he had been a man who came to the Chola country from Kerala and, being skilled at war and the ways of the good, attained the status of a sāmanta or vassal under Rājāditya. But when his lord was in need at Takkōḷam, he was for some reason not by his side, and could not obtain the ‘joy of dying with him on the battlefield’ (sahamaraṇasukhaṃ saṃyuge). Shamed by this absence, he wandered weary of the world, and eventually took initiation into a religious order. The Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription, however, ends on a happier note, announcing that fortune, his erstwhile companion, had once again smiled upon him, when he attained a headship at a monastery in Tiruvoṟṟiyūr.

What makes this inscription unique, even remarkable, and of singular interest for our concerns in this essay, is its remembrance of the ascetic’s earlier life and his relationship with his former lord and master, the prince Rājāditya. How are we to understand this publicly stated narrative of remembrance, remorse and renunciation, and how can we best characterize this relationship, and others like it, given the apparent sparseness of evidence? In the paragraphs that follow I will put the early career of Caturānana Paṇḍita in the context of the dynastic history and affiliative relationships of the early Chola empire.

What do we know of Caturānana Paṇḍita’s life in the Chola lands? Thanks to the careful work of V. Raghavan, it is possible to identify Caturānana Paṇḍita with a Kerala noble known from other records by the name Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ. ¹² Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ features in two recently published inscriptions from a village in South Arcot district named Grāmam. The first, dated in the 29th year of Parāntaka’s reign (936 AD), and some 20 years before the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription, recording the gift of sheep for a perpetual lamp to Śiva at Tirumuṭiyūr, informs us that Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ hailed from Puttūr on the banks of the Nandi river, and that he was a general of Prince Rājādtiya. ¹³ The other record, at the same place, dated 7 years later, records the refurbishment of the same temple at Tirumuṭiyūr. This more elaborate record begins with a Sanskrit verse, inscribed in Tamil Grantha, describing Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ as an ‘eminent man from Kerala’ (uttamaḥ keraḷāṇām) and a loyal, literally ‘unswerving’ (avicalita) military commander of the prince. ¹⁴ With this information, we may now return for a closer look at Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s career as described in the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription. This record tells of the young Cāturānana Paṇḍita’s, that is, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s youth and migration to the Chola country. Soon, it says, he obtained the position of a sāmanta due to what the inscription calls ‘great and very transparent affection’ (prakaṭataragurusneha-samantabhāvam). We will return to this description later, but first let us situate the context of Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s arrival in the Chola country in light of tenth-century dynastic politics in South India.

Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s account of his migration to the Chola country must be put in a larger context of the arrival of numerous military personnel at the Chola court from Kerala in the tenth century. ¹⁵ Judging from the inscriptional record, it would seem that Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ was not the only man from Kerala who had close associations with Prince Rājāditya. A number of men from Kerala seem to have been present in the entourage (parivāram) of Prince Rājāditya from as early as the 930s. They appear with other men from his entourage as donors in the inscriptions at Grāmam and Tirunāmanallūr in the 930s and 940s, usually establishing temple lamps. ¹⁶ It is not precisely clear how these men came to the Chola kingdom, but several of their names suggest that, like Veḷḷan Kumāraṉ, they hailed from families who held various landed estates under the Cheras of Makotai. ¹⁷ Most of these men seem to have arrived in the Chola lands sometime from the second or third decades of the tenth century, most likely in connection with a key marriage alliance between the Chola king Parāntaka and a Chera princess from the house of Makotai. ¹⁸ This woman bore the title of Kiḻāṉ Aṭikaḷ or Kōkkiḻāṉ Aṭikaḷ, and was the mother of Prince Rājāditya. ¹⁹ It thus seems likely that these men came to Chola lands in connection with this marriage, either as retainers of her bridal retinue or as part of the fulfillment of hereditary obligations (perhaps what the Grāmam inscription calls mūlabhṛtya) of these aristocratic families toward the Chera sovereign, who deputed them or transferred their obligations to the Chola courts. What is clear, however, is that these men had a special association with Kōkkiḻāṉ’s son, Rājāditya, and some of them, and perhaps even their own sons, took service in Rājāditya’s retinue from a very young age. Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s own presence in Cōḻanāṭu is documented from as early as 936 AD (though he is likely to have arrived earlier), but according to his later Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription, he arrived after his training-in-arms had been completed. ²⁰

What was the political background of this marriage and migration? Through much of the ninth century, the Cholas, though an established family, had little political power. Based in the city of Uṟaiyūr, they were surrounded by much more powerful and ambitious kingdoms like the Pāṇḍyas of Madurai to the south, the Pallavas of Kanchi in Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and their underlords in the lower Deccan (see Figure 1). But sometime during the latter half of the ninth century, the fortunes of the family began to turn when, during the nebulous reign of King Vijayālaya (c. 850–871), and acting as subordinates of the more powerful Pallava kings, the Cholas were able to defeat a local family of Muttaraiyars around the city of Tanjavur to establish a base there. Not long afterwards, striking out on their own, they conquered large parts of Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam and, during the reign of Āditya (c. 871–907) and his son Parāntaka (907–955) embarked on an aggressive policy of marital alliance with both local and regional families. The full extent of these marriages is unknown, but they seem to have been extensive—Nilakanta Sastri noted some eleven different queens in the epigraphical record for the Chola king Parāntaka alone. ²¹ The alliances included both local families, like the Irrukuveḷs of Koḍuṃbāḷūr, the chiefs of Miḷāḍu and Maḻanāṭu and the Palaveṭṭuraiyars (see Figure 1), as well as more distant regional families like the Gaṅgas, Bāṇas, Rāṣṭrakūṭas and Cheras. ²²

These matrimonial alliances with other families were typically complex arrangements that included multiple marriages, often across generations, and the movement of individuals from the wider kin groups involved. Substantial evidence exists for the Chola intermarriage with key local lords like the Irukkuveḷs across several generations—marriages which seem to have secured a cadre of loyal military commanders and troops to assist Chola ambitions against more distant regional powers, though the precise nature of these relationships is not entirely clear. ²³ The Chola relations with the Cheras of Makotai must have been inaugurated during the reign of Ādtiya, during whose reign an undated inscription of a Chola king with the title Rājakesari (hence most likely Āditya) tells us that the Chola king jointly conferred, with the Chera king Sthāṇu Ravi, feudatory titles and privileges on one Vikki Aṇṇaṉ. ²⁴ More definite evidence appears in the next generation, when Āditya’s son Parāntaka married, as we have seen, at least one (but more likely two) Chera princesses, the mothers of two of his more prominent sons, Rājāditya and Ariñjaya. These alliances were not simply marriages, but alliances which brought a stream of Chera nobles into the Chola country either attached to the retinues of these two queens or assigned to the Chola court more generally, for they feature prominently in the epigraphy, as mentioned, as part of the retinues of their sons.

Meanwhile, Chola regional ambitions in the tenth century put the kingdom on a collision course with other regional powers. The conquest of Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam during the reign of Āditya, ongoing entanglements with the Bāṇas and Gaṅgas, and interference in a Rāṣṭrakūṭa succession dispute had all drawn the hostile attention of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas to the north. Historians have pointed out that Parāntaka anticipated this conflict, and to this end sometime in the 930s, or perhaps even earlier, ²⁵ the prince Rājāditya was dispatched from the palace by his father with a substantial military contingent, including elephants and horses, as well as his entire household, to the region of Tirumuṉaippāṭi-nāḍu, for the purpose of protecting the northern marches of the Chola kingdom. ²⁶ He seems to have been joined in Tirumuṉaippāṭi-nāḍu by his mother and possibly at times his brother Ariñjaya. ²⁷ His main encampment in Tirumuṉaippāṭi seems to have been in the famous temple city of Tirunāvalūr (Tirunāmanallūr), which was renamed ‘Rājādityapuram’ after the prince, as was an important temple founded by his mother Kōkkiḻāṉ Aṭikaḷ at the same place. ²⁸ It is to this temple that numbers of soldiers and retainers, mostly from Kerala, made gifts in 950s and 60s and it is in the nearby city of Grāmam (also in Tirumuṉaippāṭi) that Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ is recorded as having made donations to local temples in the 930s and 40s. We may infer from these inscriptions that the prince Rājāditya was stationed with a substantial number of nobles, retainers and soldiers from Kerala connected to his mother’s natal family in Tirumuṉaippāṭi-nāṭu perhaps as early as 12 years before the Rāṣṭrakūṭa advance into this region.

But the garrisoning of Rājāditya in Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam may have had other motives as well. If marriages provided important alliances for the Chola kings, they also filled their households with queens and children whose differing agendas and ambitions had to be managed carefully. The political tensions that could arise from such situations were legion, and no doubt formed the premise of what by the tenth century were well-known sayings in political manuals about the dangers of queens and princes to the stability of the royal household and the very health and well-being of the king. ²⁹ The proper disposition of these kin elements—both wives and sons—was a major concern for powerful households, and seems to have been most often achieved through spatial dispersal—the deployment of princes and their entourages to strategically selected regions of the realm. ³⁰ Our evidence here is somewhat shadowy, to be sure, and must to a certain extent be inferred, but we do know that during the reign of Parāntaka, the princes Rājāditya and Ariñjaya seem to have been sent to Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam by the 940s, their brother Uttamaśīli was charged with protecting the southern reaches of the empire from Pandya armies, while Gaṇḍarāditya’s whereabouts during this period are less certain, though it seems likely that he was deputed to the traditional seat of Chola power, Uṟaiyūr, near modern-day Trichy. ³¹ Furthermore, evidence suggests that this spatial dispersal of princes must have included their own households, in particular their mothers and wives, who often acted as important benefactors in local temple-building projects and who were often accompanied by their own natal kin. ³² In the inscriptions of Tirunāmanallūr, we find donations by scribes, accountants, physicians, masseuses and kitchen workers associated with the household of Rājāditya. ³³ The Chola imperial household was thus far from the centralized institution that Nilakanta Sastri had once represented it as, but seems to be better conceived as a congeries of geographically dispersed lesser households inhabited by the complex kin networks engendered by marriage alliances. ³⁴

The full dynamics of this complex, dispersed household in the 930s and 940s is unfortunately lost to us. One thing is clear: recent reviews of the evidence suggest a much less certain situation regarding succession than has traditionally been assumed. Most historians, following the lead of Nilakanta Sastri, assumed that Rājāditya was crowned ‘heir apparent’ by his father for at least 2 years (947–49 AD) before his death at the battle of Takkōḷam. ³⁵ Nilakanta Sastri’s argument—based on the reading of a single inscription and caught up in complicated debates about the chronology of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa III’s campaign in Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam—has recently been contested and superseded by S. Swaminathan, who has provided a convincing re-assessment of the evidence. ³⁶ Whatever the exact chronology of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa campaign, what is key for us here is Swaminathan’s conclusion that it is certainly not possible to argue, on the basis of the available evidence, that Rājāditya was nominated as heir-apparent during the reign of his father. ³⁷ The inscriptional praśastis and literary accounts of the dynasty would seem to corroborate this line of interpretation—that is, the absence of inscriptions from Tirumuṉaippāṭi or elsewhere dated in the reign of Rājāditya. ³⁸ The overwhelming evidence, therefore, suggests that Prince Rājāditya was not crowned as heir-apparent during his lifetime or in his capacity as lord of Tirumuṉaippāṭi. In fact, the inscriptional record instead suggests that it was his younger brother Gaṇḍarāditya who enjoyed this honour after Rājāditya’s death at the battle of Takkōḷam. ³⁹ The question of succession in the 940s was hardly certain, and Rājāditya’s status as eldest son in no way secured his claim to the throne. His own father, it must be remembered, had bypassed his elder brother to take the throne. ⁴⁰

It is in the context of Prince Rājāditya’s garrisoning at Tirumuṉaippāṭi, with a substantial number of retainers and military personnel drawn from his mother’s natal family and their servants, that we need to consider the friendship between the prince and daṇḍanāyaka Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ. The bond between the men grew on the one hand in the context of both Rājāditya’s and Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s service to the Chola monarch, and on the other hand in a context of uncertainty regarding the future status of Rājāditya and his relations (including his mother and entourage)—and presumably, the fate of Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ himself. What is key here is that the chains of hierarchy that were ultimately centred on the royal court also engendered diverse relations within the graded and relatively ‘lateral’ relations that were nested within this hierarchy. Princes and important courtiers developed close ties with their own circles of supporters, allies and dependents. For a royal prince who was possible inheritor of the throne, this was particularly important, as developing close ties and enduring loyalties was necessary for his own protection and ambitions at a crucial stage of his life.

The affective dimensions of the relationship between the two men are difficult to reconstruct based on the sparse evidence available to us. As noted before, just three inscriptions relating to Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ have come down to us—two from the village of Grāmam, dated 936 and 943, and the inscription from Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, dated in 959. The inscriptions span more than 20 years and effectively map out the major changes in the life of Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ, a quite unusual state of affairs for the epigraphic record. The earliest of the inscriptions, entirely in Tamil and dated to 936, records a temple donation by Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ who is described as ‘general of the large army of prince Rājāditya from Puttūr on the banks of the Nandi river in Malaināṭu’ (piḷḷaiyār rājādittar perumpaṭai nāyakaṉ malaināṭṭu nantikaraiputtur veḷḷaṉ kumaraṉ). ⁴¹ Another inscription dated 7 years later is bilingual—in Sanskrit and Tamil—recording the making (or renovation) of a temple. The switch in linguistic register is accompanied by a more elaborate description of the donor, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ, who is called as the ‘best of the men from Kerala’ (uttamaḥ keralānām), ‘the crown among those who conquer the power of the kali yuga’ (mauliḥ…kalibalajayinām) and most significantly, ‘the visibly unswerving military commander of Rājāditya’ (rājādityasya sākṣād avicalitacamūnāyako). ⁴² The hiatus between these two inscriptions was a significant period, as it saw the appearance of numerous military men attached to the entourage (parivāram) of Prince Rājāditya, as donors at the temples of the area, most particularly at Tirunāmanallūr and Grāmam. We know of their service to Rājāditya because they clearly mention this affiliation in inscriptions celebrating their public donations to these temples. These inscriptions, in other words, were not only expressions of devotion to Śiva but also public enunciations of royal service and expressions of lateral solidarity. Though each inscription indexes a number of hierarchies—devotion to Śiva and his servants, service to Prince Rājāditya and the greater Chola court of which he was a part—it also invokes the collectivity of the parivāram itself. In this context, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s Sanskrit inscription was an assertion of both lateral solidarity as well as hierarchical pre-eminence, as ‘best among the men of Kerala’. If this were all, we might not have reason to consider further the relationship between Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ and Prince Rājāditya. Yet the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription, composed 16 years later, discusses the feelings of the courtier-general to his lord in an explicitly affective register. Here, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s career is recounted in a single verse, but this time with a focus on his relationship with Rājāditya:

That strong armed one, having acquired as a child all the sciences of the world, and with Śrī fixed on his broad chest, and devoted to the welfare of the world, entered the lands of the Chola, and achieved the position of a vassal of king Rājāditya on account of his great and very transparent affection, but did not obtain, owing to his absence, the happiness of dying with him together on the battlefield. ⁴³

Here, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ attributes his rise to the rank of ‘vassal’ (sāmantabhāva) directly to the copious and palpable affection he had for the prince Rājāditya—that his worldly elevation, in other words, came directly from his particular emotional attachment to his master. The use of the term sneha in this verse suggests greater emotional intensity and social intimacy than terms typically used in inscriptions to denote the loyalty and ‘attachment’ of vassals toward their overlords. ⁴⁴ Indeed, as noted above, sneha was the preferred term used by Sanskrit aestheticians to denote the emotion most appropriate to friendship. ⁴⁵ Though sneha was not exclusive to the relations of friendship, and could apply to a range of other filiations, it did denote an intense feeling of non-sexual affection that was particularly characteristic of friendship. ⁴⁶ Here, it denoted an intense feeling of affection and comradery that not simply traversed the boundaries of a hierarchical, service relationship but happily inhabited this structure. This intensity of feeling is underscored by the retrospective character of this representation, which continues in a sad and almost remorseful vein about the absence of Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ from the battle of Takkōḷam. Unfortunately, we have no access to the feelings of Rājāditya and can only guess that Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s remembrance points to an intimacy that is now sadly lost to us.

The Saint and His Companion

The courtly or martial milieu was not the only social arena where expressions of male intimacy and companionship were to be found. If military societies depended upon corporate identity and lateral bonding in the context of hierarchical service in the early Chola period, so too did the communities devoted to the service of God. The inscriptions at Tirunāmanallūr, in fact, point to a profound, and perhaps, as we shall see, very significant convergence in this regard. The donative records of Rājāditya’s parivāram are inscribed on the walls of a temple known in the inscriptions before, during and after its renomination in honour of Prince Rājāditya, as the ‘temple of the Lord of the Sacred Servants’ or Tirutoṇṭīśvarar—a name that invoked not simply Śiva but a particular group of his human, worldly servants. Indeed, a key feature of the Śaiva devotional movement in this region was the idea that there was a host of devotees who, though separated in their lifetimes by space and time, constituted a collective or congregation, all simultaneously resident on the slopes of Mount Kailāsa, in eternal meditation on Lord Śiva.

The connection between the temple at Tirunāmanallūr and this congregation of servants, however, was even more particular, for Tirunāmanallūr, also known as Tirunāvalūr, was the reputed birthplace of perhaps the most well-known and beloved of these devotees, the ‘saint’ (nāyaṉār, lit. ‘leader’) Cuntaramūrtti, or Cuntarar. And it is to his life story that we will now turn to examine a remarkable friendship with some uncanny resonances to the events we have just mentioned. Unlike the case of Rājāditya and his Kerala general, the friendship we will be examining in this section comes from a set of highly textualized and chronologically layered narratives—in this case from the Śaiva hagiographical traditions. These traditions ostensibly had their origins in pre-Chola times, but their current extant forms only took shape in the Chola period: first at the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century, and then more fully and comprehensively in the twelfth—in both instances at the courts of Chola kings. The story cycle with which we will be concerned recounts the celebrated friendship of the famous Śaiva saints Cuntarar and Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ. Cuntarar, or Cuntaramūrttināyaṉār (also known by other names such as Tampirāṉ Tōḻaṉ, Nampi Ārurār and Vaṉtoṇṭar), was born into a family of Ādi Śaiva priests in none other than the town of Tirunāvalūr (Tirunāmanallūr) in Tirumuṉaippāṭi nāṭu, but was raised as a prince in the family of a local lord, thereby acquiring the name ‘chief (vēntar) of Muṉaippāṭi’. Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ, literally meaning ‘Chera king’, was the name assigned to a devotee of reputedly royal ancestry from the Chera dynasty of Makotai, earlier known by the name of Kaḻaṟiṟṟaṟivār (lit. ‘the one who knows [all] languages’). Since the evolution of the story of their friendship will have some bearing on ancillary arguments I hope to make about the relations between the Cheras and Cholas more generally, and the friendship we have already reviewed in the pages above, it will be worth pausing over its textual development.

Both Cuntarar and Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ are counted among a group of sixty-three Śaiva saints (sing nayaṉār, pl. nayaṉmār) who lived between the sixth and ninth centuries in the Tamil-speaking zone, and who composed devotional hymns called patikams (ten-or eleven-stanza poems) that were sung in temples as early as the tenth century and later anthologized into a larger canon of sacred writings probably in the twelfth century. While the historicity of individual nayaṉmār has occupied considerable scholarship, the collectivity of the ‘congregation’ of saints—even though many were dispersed in time and place—formed an integral part of the tradition itself by the ninth century. The first enumeration of the sixty-three nayaṉmār as a whole is to be found in one of the hymns of the saint Cuntarar himself, who is thought to have lived at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century. This patikam, known as the ‘Littany of Holy Servants’ (Tiruttoṇṭattokai), briefly mentions the names of some sixty-two devotees, with Cuntarar himself completing the list. ⁴⁷ The Tirutttoṇṭattokai tells us very little about each devotee, typically mentioning just a single trait or event associated with his life. The descriptions are often followed by the phrase aṭiyeṉ, ‘I am the servant of…’, signalling Cuntarar’s devotion to his fellow devotees, and expressing a sense of comradery and collectivity that must have already been part of the tradition.

The Tiruttoṇṭattokai, along with Cuntarar’s other hymns, were anthologized with the poems of other nayaṉmār into a Śaiva canon called the Tirumuṟai perhaps sometime during the twelfth century (but also maybe as late as the fourteenth century), when the last text of this canon, a hagiography we will be examining below, was composed. Between Cuntarar’s iteration and the composition of the last text of the canon, there seems also to have been a consolidation of the biographical traditions around each of the individual nāyaṉār, as Cuntarar’s bare-bones list gave way to more detailed elaborations, first in the tenth or eleventh century, when one Nampi Āṇṭār Nampi, probably resident at a Chola court, composed his Tiruttoṇṭar Tiruvantāti, and again in the twelfth century, when the celebrated poet Cēkkiḻār, at the court of the Chola king Kulottuṅka II (1133–50) composed his Periyapurāṇam, ‘sealing’ the Tirumuṟai with a masterful poetic and hagiographical court epic purporting to expand on Cuntarar’s Tiruttoṇṭattokai. It is this last account that we will be drawing upon below, but it will be useful to keep this textual chronology in mind, for we will return to it when considering the wider significance of this story cycle in Chola history.

Cuntarar’s career is at the centre of the Periyapurāṇam, his biography providing the frame story for the poem and episodes from his life forming key moments of its narrative elaboration. The text begins with Cuntarar residing in blissful devotion to Śiva on the slopes of Mount Kailāsa with other devotees. But as the result of a momentary lustful pining for two of Parvati’s servant girls, Śiva makes Cuntarar descend to earth—along with these women—to live a carnal, worldly life. He is born in the village of Tirunāvalūr (none other than Rājādityapuram referred to above), but is given over by his parents to be raised by a local lord, thereby acquiring various titles relating to being a ‘lord (vēntar) of Muṉaippāṭi’. Unaware of his calling, Cuntarar is set to be married, but the wedding is interrupted by a beggar (Śiva in disguise) who claims to possess a deed making him his slave, thus inaugurating Cuntarar’s life of service to Śiva. The part of the Cuntarar biography with which we will be concerned—telling of the Cuntarar’s friendship with Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ—is narrated in two chapters: the story of Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ nayaṉār’s life and the final chapter of the Periyapurāṇam recounting Cuntarar’s ascent and return to Mount Kailāsa. Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ, according to Cēkkiḻār, was the son of a king who lived in Kotuṅkolūr, or Tirumākottai. ⁴⁸ An ardent devotee of Śiva at the temple of Tiruvañcaikaḷam, Cēramāṉ passes his days in apparent oblivion to the fact that he will eventually have to ascend the throne. When informed of this immanent event by his father, the prince is deeply worried of the consequences such a career would have for his routine of daily worship. After seeking Śiva’s permission, however, and receiving the boon of understanding all languages, Cēramāṉ reluctantly agrees to become king with the intention of pursuing both a life of devotion and a life of rule. Time goes by and Cēramāṉ displays both his just rule (facilitated by his knowledge of all languages) as well as his exceeding devotion to Śiva—he is particularly known for his generosity toward religious mendicants.

One day, Cēramāṉ is concluding his daily worship and doesn’t hear the jingling anklets of Śiva as he usually does. His initial uneasiness quickly turns to distress and panic and, drawing his sword, he is about to impale himself, when Śiva appears, explaining that he was late because he had been at the great hall in Chidambaram (Tillai), enraptured listening to the songs of a devotee named Cuntarar, who had come from his home in Tiruvārūr to worship him. Struck with wonder, Cēramāṉ vows to go to Tillai in the Chola kingdom to worship Śiva and see the peerless devotee Cuntarar. After making travel arrangements, he journeys to the Chola kingdom and is received at Chidambaram with honour. He takes his place among the servants in the golden hall, where he sings a beautiful and famous antāti for Śiva. After this ‘introduction’ to Śiva’s court, Cēramāṉ continues to reside there in worship until one day, when Śiva is delayed again due to being away in Tiruvārūr hearing the songs of Cuntarar, Cēramāṉ is reminded of his desire to meet the famous Cuntarar. From Chidambaram, he embarks on the short journey to Tiruvārūr, stopping at many temples along the way. At Tiruvārūr, he is met by the local Brahmins and then by Cuntarar himself. On seeing Cuntarar, Cēramāṉ prostrates himself, and Cuntarar returns his obeisance and then embraces the king. According to Cēkkiḻār, at this embrace, the two men were as if one in both body and spirit, and were emotionally overtaken, like being tossed about in a sea of happiness (iṉpaveḷḷam) without being able to climb out (3812). Seeing this amity, the servants of Śiva became happy without end. The friendship (naṇpu) between Cuntarar and the Chera king, according to Cēkkiḻar, earned for the ‘lord of Muṉaippāṭi’ the title of ‘Cēra’s companion’ (tōḻar) (3813).

Following this initial scene of their friendship, Cēkkiḻār introduces two important scenes which further cement their relationship and set the tone for their ensuing career together. First Cuntarar leads Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ into the temple at Tiruvārūr where they each worship Śiva in turn, the Chera king singing a famous song. Following this, Cuntarar invites Cēramāṉ to his house where, after a formal welcome, he is invited to eat with Cuntarar. This is a significant scene, for a Brahmin and king dining together violated accepted commensality practice. Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ quite naturally thus hesitates at first, and only after being reassured by Cuntarar, accepts the invitation. They sit together and eat, served by Paravai, Cuntarar’s wife. Though Cēkkiḻār is silent on the matter, it is worth pointing out that in some aristocratic circles, as we shall see, the sharing of food with one’s companion and lord was part of a specific ritual bonding between the two for life.

What Cēkkiḻār is clear on is that this meeting inaugurates a lifelong friendship, and the two men embark as companions on a long journey. They travel together to many temples across the Chola land, visit the Pandya kingdom, eventually entering the realm of the Chera king himself, where they reside for many months. Here, they live the lives of royalty, with sumptuous food and royal entertainments—all punctuated, however, by the daily worship of Śiva. After some time, Cuntarar longs for his home (not for his wife, it should be noted, but for Śiva as he resides in Tiruvārūr) and he decides to take his leave of Cēramāṉ. Cēramāṉ is distraught, protesting that he will not be able to survive without his beloved friend, but Cuntarar calms him, saying that it is only proper that he should reside in his kingdom and rule his land. The Chera king escorts him part of the way home and the two take leave of one another, vowing to remain lifelong friends. Here, Cēkkiḻār ends the story of Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ.

But it is not the end of their companionship, for the final book of the Periyapurāṇam returns to their relationship in its account of Cuntarar’s return to Kailāsa, in many ways the denouement of both Cuntarar’s story and Cēkkiḻār’s narrative. ⁴⁹ As the story unfolds, Cuntarar, years later, decides to pay a visit to his old friend in Mākottai, and, unannounced, makes the journey to the land of the Chera. As he approaches, messengers go ahead and bring the news to the Chera king, who is beside himself with joy, proclaiming aloud that Cuntarar, his ‘master’ (eṉ aiyaṉ), his ‘lord’ (lit. the lord that rules over him, eṉai āḷum aṇṇal), his ‘companion’ (tuṇaiyaṉ) and ‘captain’ (talaivaṉ), the Śaiva from Ārūr, has arrived (4245). Cēramāṉ travels atop his elephant with his entourage to the boundary of Malaināṭu to meet his friend. When he sees Cuntarar, the two of them bow to each other and embrace. They immediately fall to talking in easy conversation like old friends. Their retinues, seeing this amity, rejoice. The Chera king then escorts Cuntarar back to his city, placing him on top of his own elephant and shading him with the royal parasol. Their entrance to the city is the cause of much rejoicing and they thereafter happily pass the days together in friendship, once again punctuated by their daily worship of Śiva.

One day, while Cuntarar is in the midst of his daily worship, messengers of Śiva arrive, a white elephant in tow, to inform him that it was now time for him to return to be with Śiva on Mount Kailāsa. Cuntarar is overjoyed at the prospect of returning to his former abode, and climbs onto the elephant, which begins to ascend into the heavens. Just then, Cēramāṉ gets word of these events and mounts his horse, swiftly arriving at the temple. Seeing his friend slowly disappearing on a white elephant climbing into the sky, the Chera king becomes greatly agitated. Thinking quickly, he whispers a Śiva stotra into the ear of his horse, which miraculously takes off in flight after the elephant. Cēramāṉ quickly overtakes the elephant in the sky and circles around it, eventually leading before it in processional style as the two reach the southern entrance of Kailāsa (see Figure 2). They proceed through its outer gate, but are stopped at the inner gate, from where only Cuntarar is allowed to proceed. He is escorted to an audience with Śiva himself. Cuntarar falls to the ground in worship, as Śiva beneficently welcomes his return. Amidst his bliss however, Cuntarar becomes suddenly solemn, and plaintively announces to Śiva that the Chera king is standing outside. Śiva bids Nandi to bring him in, and when he arrives, sternly asks him why he has come, uninvited. Cēramāṉ explains that he had merely followed Cuntarar in devotion, worshipping his feet along the way, and now had fortuitously found himself in audience with their mutual Lord. Grateful, he asks for the favour of reciting a praise hymn (ulā) to Śiva, who grants his request (4275). ⁵⁰ After hearing his composition, Śiva grants the Chera king the boon of remaining at Kailāsa to have continued companionship with Cuntarar, in their mutual service to Śiva. The Chera king is appointed general of Śiva’s hosts, and Cuntarar resumes his service to Śiva. Then, presumably to provide narrative closure, Cēkkiḻār informs us that Cuntarar’s two wives, who, having been incarnations of the two servant girls of Parvatī after whom Cuntarar had lusted at the outset of the narrative, now rejoin their rightful place in Parvatī’s retinue. And here the poem ends.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Source: Courtesy of Indira Peterson.

This is in many ways a remarkable story—a sort of triangulated relationship between Śiva and his two devotees, cast in a strongly courtly idiom. Cēkkiḻār’s language freely mixes the vocabularies of companionship, affection and lordship—in which friendship is seen to be animated through, rather than against or despite, relations of hierarchy. Cuntarar is cast as both Śiva’s and the Chera king’s friend and companion, despite his service to the former and his adoration by the latter. Cēramāṉ calls Cuntarar his lord, his master and his friend. Cēkkiḻār carefully portrays the exchanges between the men, their greetings, which are expressed both through formality (bowing, prostration and the offering of other courtly courtesies are maintained throughout) as well as affective excess (like the markers of spontaneous emotional affect). The key idea seems to be that friendship both can and indeed should enliven the relationship of service maintained between lord and the most intimate subordinate. But equally important is the ‘lateral’ relationship between the two devotees, who, while certainly not cast as spiritual or ritual equals, are nevertheless both seen as united in common cause and sharing the bond of love and service to their mutual lord Śiva. Here, the theme of companionship works in the Periyapurāṇam to emphasize the ‘communitas’ of the Śaiva initiates.

Unlike our epigraphic example, the emotional contours of this hagiographical friendship are repeated and explicit. The anticipation of meeting, the happiness of togetherness and the longing of separation are more than palpable in Cēkkiḻār’s verses. The emotional world depicted, it should be noted, is entirely masculine, despite several narrative opportunities open to the author for the depiction of romantic or conjugal affect. The arrival of Cuntarar’s earthly wives at Kailāsa in the final book, for example, is merely Cēkkiḻār’s way of tying up the story of Cuntarar’s banishment rather than an occasion for conjugal reunion—the women resume their rightful place in Parvatī’s temple where they had been before their exile from her to mundane world. The narrative tension of the Cēramāṉ–Cuntarar story cycle largely revolves around the theme of togetherness and separation of the two men, drawing on an emotional vocabulary that by Cēkkiḻār’s time was rich with resonances from the language of romantic and spiritual love. The key dramatic moments in Cēkkiḻār’s account of the friendship between the men are not so much actions undertaken together—for their joint activities mostly entail the worship of Śiva—but the anticipation of an impending meeting or reunion, the initial joy of seeing one’s friend, but even more powerfully, the pain of departure, and longing during separation. The dramatic denouement of the friendship, and indeed Cēkkiḻār’s narrative as a whole, it may be argued, is the anxiety over separation from one’s friend after the cessation of worldly existence. Cēramān’s final act in this world is to follow his friend into the next, where after Cuntarar’s intercession before Śiva and Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ’s proof of his devotion by the presentation of the first ulā poem, the two friends are united both in eternal companionship and service to their common lord.

The attentive reader will have noted some quite obvious parallels between the epigraphical case examined in the first portion of this article and the Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ–Cuntarar friendship. In both cases, we have a man from the Malaināṭu, from the kingdom of the Cheras, journeying to the Chola lands. And in each case he becomes the companion of a lord associated with Tirunāvalūr in the region of Muṉaippāṭi. In both cases, the lord departs for the heavens, leaving his companion behind. And again in both instances the desire to pursue one’s lord beyond this life is explicitly stated. Such parallels, as we shall see, go even further. But I would like to briefly comment on the rather enigmatic figure of Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ in our second example, who has a life that extends far beyond our story cycle here, as in Kerala’s regional traditions he is known as the last king of the Chera dynasty who converted to Islam. The name Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ is itself a clue, for it is not a personal name but merely a generic title (as in ‘the Chola king’)—one typically used in Chola and Pandya inscriptions to designate the third of the great mūveṇṭar, or triumvarate of royal families that ruled over South India. ⁵¹ Moreover, the figure of Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ does not seem to appear in the earliest Śaiva texts. In fact, Cuntarar’s Tiruttoṇṭattokai mentions no nāyaṉār with this title at all—only a devotee with the title of Kaḻaṟiṟṟaṟivār, an epithet, as we saw, meaning ‘one who knows (all) language(s)’. ⁵² Nor is the friendship between this person and Cuntarar mentioned in either the Tiruttoṇṭattokai or in Cuntarar’s other hymns. ⁵³ It appears that it is only in Nampi Āṇṭār Nampi’s Tiruttoṇṭa Tiruvantāti, composed at the Chola court, probably in the tenth century, that Kaḻaṟiṟṟaṟivār is first identified with the eponymous title ‘Cēraṉ’. ⁵⁴ And Nampi also for the first time clearly refers to the friendship between Cuntarar and the Chera king, particularly Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ’s accompaniment of Cuntarar to Kailāsa—the same scene depicted in the eleventh-century fresco at the Bṛhadīśvara temple at Tanjavur (see Figure 2). ⁵⁵ By the time of the Periyapurāṇam, as we have seen above, Cēkkiḻār has much indeed to say about the friendship between these two men. Given the textual evolution of this cycle, it appears that the stories of the two saints may have originally circulated independently, but at some point in the course of the tenth century became associated with one another. This textual development, combined with the generic nature of Cēramāṉ’s name, suggests that the tenth-century crystallization of this narrative may have had much to do with the rise of Chola dominance in South India. Indeed, the story cycle itself—depicting a friendship between the lord of Tirumuṉaippāṭi in the Chola lands and the king from Kerala—not to mention its continued reiteration at the courts of later Chola kings in the eleventh century and again in the twelfth (by which time relations between the Cholas and Cheras had long soured), seems to signal the dynastic filiations between houses from these regions that had commenced from the end of the ninth century to produce one of the most well-remembered princes of the family. On the other hand, the Cēramāṉ–Cuntarar story cycle, whose circulation seems to be roughly contemporaneous with the events described in the first half of this essay, formed a sort of ideal which set the affective horizons, as it were, for individuals like Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ.

Conclusion: Death and Rebirth

If Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ was able to follow his lord and companion into the next realm, and be rewarded with eternal companionship, one cannot say the same for Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ, who ruefully expresses the fact that he did not attain the happiness of dying with his friend and master, Prince Rājāditya, on the battlefield (sahamaraṇasukhaṃ saṃyuge tena nāptataḥ). Both of our cases seem to invoke a set of practices, known from inscriptions and travel accounts from as early as the tenth century, in which close friends and retainers of a lord took an oath of loyalty that involved sharing the death of their master—what historians have called the institution of ‘companions of honour’. ⁵⁶ Not much is known about this constellation of practices, which include specific rites that often go under different names, though their particular association with the mountainous regions of southwestern India (from where both Cēramāṉ Perumāḷ and Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ hailed) is clear and consistent. The sources, epigraphic and textual, tend to point toward an ideal of companionship in the context of service, only open to the most loyal and intimate of relations, the distinctive feature of which was the commitment of one’s life to one’s master and friend—a vow that entailed either death on the battlefield or suicide through various other means when one’s lord died. ⁵⁷

These traditions, so prevalent in the mountainous regions where his family had likely served as loyal vassals of the Chera kings, would no doubt have weighed heavily on the mind of Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ. In fact, he takes the time to recall precisely his feelings at the time in a key verse of the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr inscription ⁵⁸ —that he was greatly agitated (ākula) that his absence on the battlefield was ‘unworthy of his class, himself, his lineage, and his master’ (jātyātmānvayatātabhartra-sadṛśaṃ). Notably, what was referred to in the previous verse as an absence (asannidhānāt, the reasons for which remain undisclosed) is now called an ‘act’ (karman), casting it clearly as a failure to meet a moral obligation. To understand his plight, we must not forget the situation in which Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ found himself. His failing would have made life difficult for him indeed in the political environment following Takkōḷam. While other ‘vassals’ with local roots in the region, like the Milāṭu chiefs, simply switched their allegiance to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, and the Kerala men of lower rank may have been able to do the same or find service in a shrunken Chola dominion, a high-profile intimate of this important prince would no doubt have been sufficiently disgraced to have very few social options open to him. The events that followed are thus highly significant. Already highly agitated, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ recalls that owing to his embarrassment, he became ‘indifferent’ (to the world) (vailakṣyena virāgatām upagataḥ). Were this psychological withdrawal a purely idiosyncratic emotional act, we are likely to have never heard of it again (or at all), but, as we know, there were prescribed practices and institutional paths available for such emotional and affective trajectories. In the remainder of the verse, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ tells of his peregrinations, first to the Ganges where he presumably attempted to purify himself of the stain of dishonour, and then back to Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam, to the town of Adhigrāma (Tiruvoṟṟiyūr), now in the domain of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa lords. Here, he took initiation under the ‘Great Observance’ or ‘Great Vow’ (mahāvrata) at the monastery (or cave) that had been overseen by one Nirañjana Guru of the Lākula or Kālamukha Śaiva ascetic order, and eventually took over the task of protecting that place. ⁵⁹ The initiation (dikṣā) into this religious order entailed, as far as can be reconstructed from Alexis Sanderson’s detailed study of the textual evidence and comparison with related Śaiva traditions, among other things, a removal of the elements of the initiand’s previous social identity (utpattiliṅgavyāvṛttiḥ, lit. ‘the removal of the marks of one’s birth’), and the beginning of his transformation into a liberated being. ⁶⁰ The removal of one’s birth marks required a new identity, which was provided by initiate’s dikṣā name—in Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s case Caturānana Paṇḍita. In a very real sense then, Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s initiation amounted to his social death, and though he was not able to follow his erstwhile lord to death on the battlefield, taking the Great Vow allowed him to exit the social world of courtly service honourably. The institution of the monastery provided Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ with an alternative path, if not to redeem his honour, to at least enter service once again with another community, and, it could be argued, to achieve even greater eminence and benefit. Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ’s life had seen bad times, but when he finally did find his feet again, as Caturānana Paṇḍita, he took time to publicly remember his erstwhile friend and master, and perhaps heal a long-lasting wound.

One wonders if Veḷḷaṉ Kumāraṉ perhaps thought of Cēramāṉ as he wandered in sorrow after the death of Rājāditya, before leaving the world to be reborn as a Śaiva mendicant. Conversely, one wonders if the death of Rājāditya, with his faithful and devoted entourage from Keraḷa, perhaps trivial to us now but one of the most important and most mourned deaths in the early Chola dynasty, remembered for decades, might have vaguely informed the painters and hagiographers who fleshed out the story of Cēramāṉ and Cuntarar’s association in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Perhaps it does not matter. To a great extent, the stories exemplify the common contours of friendship and emotion that structured the communities of service that emerged in early medieval South India. In any event, I hope to have vindicated Professor Karashima’s remarks by demonstrating here that reading inscriptions together with texts can potentially lead to new ways of thinking about history in medieval South India.