Current Version: draft, 2024-05-09Z
Editor: Emmanuel Francis.
DHARMA Identifier: INSTamilNadu00375
Summary: Label on a Buddhist bronze.
Hand Description:
No metadata were provided in the table for this inscription
1-2The Nāyakar (i.e., Lord Buddha) who was the Lord of people.
1-2The Lord, Lord of men.
Ramachandran 1954 comments thus: "In this votive offering the Buddha is appropriately praised as the Lord of men in the spiritual sense."
The terms āḷ-uṭaiyāṉ / āḷ-uṭaiyaṉ and āḷ-uṭaiya, respectively a nominal and a adjectival form, literally mean "who owns/possesses men/servants/devotees". See MTL, s.v. āḷ-uṭaiyāṉ: "n. 1. One who has accepted a person as servant; 2. Lord, Supreme Being." In the present case, it is not clear, but not relevant for the meaning, if we have to read āḷ-uṭaiyaṉāyakar (āḷ-uṭaiyaṉ + nāyakar) or āḷ-uṭaiya ¡ṉ!⟨n⟩āyakar.
Compare Tamil Nadu 320.
The Śaiva saints and poets of the Tēvāram, Appar, Cuntarar, and Campantar, are respectively known in epigraphical sources as āḷ-uṭaiya v-aracu, āḷ-uṭaiya nampi, and āḷ-uṭaiya piḷḷaiyār / āḷ-uṭaiya tēvar.
Edited in Ramachandran 1954, with a facsimile.
Edited and translated here by Emmanuel Francis (2024), based on Ramachandran 1954 and the facsimile therein.