The Tamarind Country

According to the Tamil Sangam literature, the vaḍukar chieftain Puḷi ruled his fiefdom from Vengaḍam or Venkaṭācal, modern Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh, which bounded Tāmiḷākam on the north-eastern side. (Aiyangar, 1923 : Some Contributions Of South India To Indian Culture, 3) It may seem rather farfetched to connect Puḷi to puḷiya which in Tamil means tamarind. But not far from Tirupathi, close to the holy cities of Tiruvarur and Chidambaram, famous for Śiva temples dedicated to Tyāgarāja and Naṭarāja respectively, lies Tiṇḍivanam or Dinḍivan, both meaning “a van (grove) of tamarind trees”. (Jauhari, 1914 : Shri Bharatvarsha Digambar Jain Yatradarpan, 313) Chidambaram has also been known as Vyāghrapūra; one of Sanskrit sthalapurāṇa of Naṭarāja at Chidambaram carries the title Vyāghrapūra Māhātmya. That’s a very interesting story. Vyāghr means a tiger in Sanskrit; Vyāghrapūra therefore means ‘tiger town’. That seems to have been the Sanskritised version of Tamil name of the place Puḷiyūr, which has been read as Puliyūr. In Tamil puli is a tiger; puḷi is tamarind. Puliyūr therefore is puli+ūr = vyāghra+pūra, while Puḷiyūr is puḷi+ūr = ‘tamarind town’. So Chidambaram itself was called the tamarind town. (Somasundaram Pillai, 1957 : A Silver Jubilee Souvenir Of The Annamallai University, 36)