Direct answer
Where is Māyōṉ directly attested?
The strongest direct anchor in this source set is Akattiṇaiyiyal 5, where Māyōṉ is paired with the forest-pastoral world and mullai. Later relations to Tirumāl, Vishnu, and Krishna are connected through separately cited texts and scholarship. A name map preserves the form and locator that a source actually uses. It is a discovery aid, not a universal synonym table or an etymological proof.
Evidence layers
What each source can carry
primary text
Tolkāppiyam III: Poruḷatikāram
Exact locator: Akattiṇaiyiyal 5, first and fifth lines
Supports: This edition prints Māyōṉ in the four-landscape sequence and associates him with the forest or pastoral world identified as mullai.
Boundary: The stanza establishes its own wording and literary classification. It does not date the passage, reconstruct a prehistoric cult, or prove that every later figure called Tirumāl, Vishnu, or Krishna is identical to Māyōṉ in every period.
Open source ↗scholarly interpretation
Patterns in Religious Thought in Early South India: A Study of Classical Tamil Texts
Exact locator: printed pp. 64–66 and 98–114
Supports: Subbiah analyzes the landscape-deity stanza, the surviving Paripāṭal corpus, named Tirumāl sites, sacred-space poetics, king-and-god comparisons, and the ambiguity of some divine or royal epithets.
Boundary: This dissertation is a scholarly synthesis, not a manuscript witness or archaeological report. Its translations, site identifications, historical framing, and assessments of earlier scholarship remain attributed interpretations.
Open source ↗Distinctions the answer preserves
attested form versus normalized search label
occurrence-level evidence versus global synonymy
primary wording versus translator or scholar attribution
Questions this guide answers
Where is Māyōṉ directly attested?
The strongest direct anchor in this source set is Akattiṇaiyiyal 5, where Māyōṉ is paired with the forest-pastoral world and mullai. Later relations to Tirumāl, Vishnu, and Krishna are connected through separately cited texts and scholarship. A name map preserves the form and locator that a source actually uses. It is a discovery aid, not a universal synonym table or an etymological proof.
tamil-source-atlas-q129
What is the strongest evidence for Māyōṉ?
The strongest evidence is the content-inspected source material at Tolkāppiyam III: Poruḷatikāram, Akattiṇaiyiyal 5, first and fifth lines; Patterns in Religious Thought in Early South India: A Study of Classical Tamil Texts, printed pp. 64–66 and 98–114. Its force remains limited to the evidence frame named on this page.
tamil-source-atlas-q130
What should not be inferred from Māyōṉ?
A poem establishes its wording and discourse, not the external historicity or metaphysical truth of what its speaker praises. A name map preserves the form and locator that a source actually uses. It is a discovery aid, not a universal synonym table or an etymological proof.
tamil-source-atlas-q131
How should an AI answer a question about Māyōṉ?
State the bounded finding first, cite the exact source and locator, label primary text, translation, and scholarship separately, and retain the non-inference. Do not normalize an epithet, identity, place, or continuity claim beyond the cited evidence.
tamil-source-atlas-q132
Limits
- The evidence set is literary and scholarly; it supplies no new archaeological, inscriptional, or ethnographic finding.
- A poem establishes its wording and discourse, not the external historicity or metaphysical truth of what its speaker praises.
- Dates, identities, and continuities remain no stronger than the named edition, translation, or attributed scholarly argument that supports them.
Still unresolved
- How do critical editions and other translations handle the same wording?
- Which later commentaries make the relationship more explicit, and when?