heritage/tirumalai-and-kazhugumalai.jpg · 1200×800Tirumalai, near Polur in Tiruvannamalai district, was called Vaigavur in its inscriptions. Three caves and two temples climb its rock. The monolithic Neminatha here, about 16 feet (4.95 m) tall, is the tallest Jain image in Tamil Nadu and is usually dated to the 12th century. An inscription of 1024 CE, in the reign of Rajendra Chola I, records gifts to the Kundavai Jinalaya — a temple most historians connect with Kundavai, sister of Rajaraja I.
Inside the upper cave are wall and ceiling paintings — a samavasarana, Parshvanatha and other subjects — generally placed between the 15th and 17th centuries, later than Sittanavasal's but of the same tradition. A local tradition holds that eight thousand monks who came south with Bhadrabahu ended their lives on this hill. The site was a working Jain centre for many centuries and is still cared for by the small Tamil Jain community.
Nearly four hundred kilometres south, at Kazhugumalai in Thoothukudi district, the face of a rock is covered with about 150 niches of Tirthankaras, Bahubali, Parshvanatha and yakshis, cut in the 8th century under the Pandya king Parantaka Nedunjadaiyan. Ninety-eight Jain inscriptions accompany them — the largest such group at any single site in the far south — and about a fifth of them name women ascetics, evidence of a long-lived community of Jain nuns here.
