There are a handful of books dedicated to ‘minor’ or ‘feudatory’ dynasties of medieval South India as a whole, with individual chapters each focused on one or other of the many minor houses and their connections to the larger regional powers and empires. This book is different, aiming instead to be a comprehensive and exhaustive study of a single lineage—in this case, the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars, a minor lineage based in the town of Paḻuvūr in modern-day Tamil Nadu and active from the end of the ninth to the beginning of the eleventh century CE. Located on the northern bank of the Kaveri river, about 30 km north of Tanjavur, capital of the Cōḻa empire, medieval Paḻuvūr is today comprised of two adjacent villages, Kīrpaḻuvūr and Merpaḻuvūr, separated by 3 km, but which together contain four early medieval temple complexes filled with approximately 136 inscriptions. It is these inscriptions (along with a handful of other relevant inscriptions from outside Paḻuvūr) that form the basis of the book. The author has provided full transcriptions and translations of these epigraphs in two hefty but easy-to-use appendices that together comprise more than half the book’s length. The painstaking work of compiling these appendices—done with the occasional help and constant inspiration of G. Venugopal, including first readings of unpublished inscriptions and improved readings of published ones—is reason enough to draw the reader’s attention.
The first chapter presents a tentative history of the dynasty, beginning with the name, which Gillet derives from paḻu+vēṭṭu+araiyar, meaning something like ‘banyan-hunter kings’, which she connects to the persistent claim made in their inscriptions to be of Maṟavar descent. Maṟavars, known as hunters, cattle-raiders, and plunderers in early Tamil literature, are often thought by historians to have been employed by the armies of regional kingdoms and, through the instrument of land grants, ‘ennobled’ into agrarian society. Gillet rightly suggests that the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars might be a concrete test case of this process, citing a number of early tenth-century records from Paḻuvūr mentioning military retainers and an important donation celebrating the glory of the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar Kaṇṭaṉ Amutaṉar when he fought at the battle of Vēḷḷūr against Sri Lankan and Pāṇdya armies on behalf of the Cōḻa king (called Perumāṉaṭikaḷ). Gillet deals with the supposed Kerala origin of the family in a suitably judicious manner. She then reconstructs a chronology for ruling Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar kings. This is no easy task, as the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars recorded no independent genealogy of their own, preferring instead to date their records in the regnal years of Cōḻa kings, a situation further complicated by the fact that, like many early Cōḻa records themselves, they refer to specific Cōḻa kings by the titles rājakesarivarmaṉ and parakesarivarmaṉ taken alternately by all kings in the family, sometimes making it difficult to distinguish and disambiguate monarchs that are being used to anchor Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar chronology. Gillet does an admirable job, reconstructing the chronology of some seven kings, from the end of the ninth century down to the beginning of the eleventh. In the end, the fortunes of the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars seem to have risen with the first wave of Cōḻa regional ascendancy in the tenth century under Parāntaka I and survived briefly into the reign of Rājarāja at the turn of the millennium, when it appears they were absorbed into the Cōḻa administration. Gillet concludes the chapter with a review of Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar women, who occasionally appear as donors in temple inscriptions. The records are not entirely forthcoming about these women but reveal more about Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar daughters given to other families, to Cōḻa overlords, or to other chieftains than women who were entering the family.
Chapters two through four treat each of the four major temple complexes of Paḻuvūr: the Avaṉikantarpa Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva and Pakaiviṭai Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva (along with the goddess shrine known as the Tiruttōṟṟamuṭaiyār) of western Paḻuvūr, and the Tiruvālantuṟai Mahādeva and the Maṟavaṉīśvara temples currently located within modern-day eastern Paḻuvūr. In each of these chapters, Gillet provides a general description of the temple, its layout, monuments, subshrines, and iconography, as well as a survey of its epigraphy—a point that distinguishes her study from the mostly architectural surveys of these temples by scholars like Balasubrahmanyam, Barrett, and Dhaky.
The fruits of these related analyses are fully presented in the conclusion, where Gillet synthesises the findings of the previous four chapters and forwards some hypotheses about the development of Paḻuvūr under the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars. First, by a close reading of inscriptions and monuments, she is able to refine the topography of Paḻuvūr, demonstrating that modern western Paḻuvūr was comprised of two areas: one devadāna known as Avaṉikantarpapuram, in which the Avaṉikantarpa Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva temple was situated and from which it was supported, and Maṉṉupperumpaḻuvūr (Big Paḻuvūr), where the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars were probably based. The Avaṉikantarpa Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva temple, judging from the 37 inscriptions preserved on its walls, seems to have been supported by the most powerful social elements of Paḻuvūr, including the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars (not through direct grants but as validators) and a network of local merchants, as well as a host of servants (tēvaṉar makaṉ/makaḷ) attached to the temple. In Maṉṉupperumpaḻuvūr, we find the Pakaiviṭai Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva temple, whose inscriptional profile records gifts made by paṭṭutaiyārs (priests) and tēvaṉar makaḷ of the Avaṉikantarpa Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva temple, but few merchant and royal inscriptions. Gillet cautiously proposes, on the basis of its epigraphic profile and architectural composition, that this temple was perhaps an earlier shrine of some significance that was integrated into the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar ‘circle’ in part through the construction of a no longer extant structure within its precincts. Information on this structure, a shrine known as the Tiruttōṟṟamuṭaiyāṛ, appears in inscriptions on stones used to construct a twelfth-century temple at the site and, though few in number, that contain reference to its construction by a Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar king in the second half of the tenth century. This shrine seems to have been abandoned after the dynasty lost its power in the eleventh century, making it vulnerable to reuse in the twelfth century by Vāṇakōvaraiyar chieftains, who apparently repeated the process of shrine construction once again to establish influence over the Pakaiviṭai Īśvaragṛhattu Mahādeva temple.
Some 3 km to the east of modern Mēlappaḻuvūr is a village today called Kīḻappaḻuvūr but known in medieval inscriptions as Ciṟupaḻuvūr (Little Paḻuvūr), presumably a complement to Maṉṉupperumpaḻuvūr (Big Paḻuvūr). Ciṟupaḻuvūr was a brahmadeya (land given to Brahmins) managed by a Brahmin sabhā (committee), with a local village temple, the Tiruvālantuṟai Mahādeva, at its centre. Of all the Paḻuvūr temples, the Tiruvālantuṟai preserves the most inscriptions, some 61 surviving between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Gillet considers it a ‘local temple’ of some significance, attracting both proximate and distant donations, but managed by the local Brahmin sabhā. Unlike other temples in Paḻuvūr, the Tiruvālantuṟai was lavishly patronised by the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar court—kings, women, and military officers—through gifts of land, gold, ritual vessels, and goats. A royal officer, Kaucikaṉ Mārapiṟaṉ, presumably under the direction of the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar king, rebuilt the monument in stone during the reign of Uttamacōḻa (circa 980 AD). Yet despite its royal patronage, the temple remained firmly under the control of the local Brahmin sabhā. This was not the case with the Maṟavaṉīśvara temple, some 100 m away, which Gillet calls an ‘echo’ of Tiruvālantuṟai. The inscriptions of the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars on these two temples include grants to one another, and judging from this cross patronage and the chronology of the records, Gillet insightfully suggests that the Maravaṉīśvara was constructed by the royal family before the Tiruvālantuṟai was rebuilt in stone during Uttamacōḻa’s reign, after which its utility was expended. The Tiruvālantuṟai temple’s continued functioning in post-Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyar times suggests, according to Gillet, its enduring local importance.
What Gillet is able to do in this book is remarkable. Through a close analysis of both the inscriptions and the monuments, she provides an ‘exceptionally clear overview of relations between distinct temples’ (p. 134) that reveals a complex and shifting interplay between built environments, social classes, and royal power. Gillet’s expertise as a specialist in temples and religious history is clearly apparent in this study, and she puts her skills and experience to excellent use in interpreting the town’s copious epigraphic archive. In the end we learn more about connected temple history than the history of the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars as such—though this is partly a problem of evidence. From the historian’s point of view, one might have wished for a little more consideration on the implications of her findings for thinking about local and imperial state formation and sovereignty—a topic she treats rather briefly, deciding, I think, rather hastily, on the apparently ‘neutral’ concept of the ‘little kingdom’. But as she rightly notes, such larger questions would require a comparison with studies of other such minor polities that have yet to be undertaken. But I find this a minor limitation, because what the book brilliantly demonstrates is the tremendous potential of doing close, limited-site research, what historians might call ‘local history’. The possibilities here are much greater than Gillet suggests and could touch upon elements of social history far more extensive than that of the ‘little kingdom’. This book, then, though on the topic of a ‘minor’ dynasty, is in fact methodologically a ‘major’ contribution to South Indian history.
