Trincomalee - Names and Etymology

Names and Etymology

Trincomalee, is an anglicized form of the Tamil word "Tiru-kona-malai", meaning "Lord of the Sacred Hill"; a reference to the town's ancient Koneswaram temple. Thiru comes from the Tamil for "sacred", Kona means "Lord" or "Chief" in the language while Malai in Tamil means mountain or hill. Another meaning for the word Kona in Tamil is peak, and other definitions for Tirukonamalai include "sacred angular/peaked hill" or "three peaked hill". The town is situated on a hill at the end of a natural land formation that resembles an arc; the temple itself is built on Swami Rock, historically referred to as Kona-ma-malai, a cliff on the peninsula that drops 400 feet (120 metres) directly into the sea.

Sanskrit texts, as well as an inscription unearthed by archeologists, call it Gokanna. The Vayu Purana refers to a Siva temple on Trikuta hill on the eastern coast of Lanka in the 3rd century. The Mahavamsa documents that the King Mahasena destroyed a Deva temple and built a Buddhist shrine in its stead to expiate for an earlier heresy on his part.

Tamil texts, as well as excavated inscriptions detail the Saivite principalities that formed in Trincomalee in service of the Koneswaram temple by the medieval age. The South Indian Tamil literature Tevaram of Tiru-gnana Sambandar makes mention to the Siva temple in Trincomalee in the 6th century. Koneswaram and the royal administration of the city is documented in several late medieval texts such as the Konesar Kalvettu and the Dakshina Kailasa Puranam.