VILLLUPURAM : A fragment of a pot adorned with Tamil alphabets, said to be from the Chola-era, have been unearthed from Thenpennai riverbed near Villupuram by a team consisting of a history professor and a research scholar. The researchers claim that this is the first instance of pot fragments with Chola-style Tamil words being unearthed from Tamil Nadu.
D Ramesh, assistant professor at the Department of History, Arignar Anna Government Arts and Science College in Villupuram; and C Immanuel, a research scholar from Ulundampattu of Panruti, have been conducting extensive search along Thenpennai riverbed and Thalavanur village near Villupuram for the past few months. They said that the pot must be from the tenth century.
“We thoroughly examined the piece and confirmed its origin from the Chola period. We identified three alphabets, reading ‘ththan’ which could be denoting ‘saththan’ or ‘gramaviththan’ (village head or peasant who possessed the pot),” said Immanuel.
He further noted that while pot pieces with Tamil Brahmi and Vattezhuthu style inscriptions have been found in Tamil Nadu previously, it is for the first time that Chola-period alphabets have been spotted on a pot.
Ramesh told TNIE that the object is not a piece of a muthumakkalthazhi (burial urn) but part of an ordinary vessel used by people during that era. “They used to inscribe names on vessels for identification,” he explained.