ORA-00904: invalid column name

you can't rename a column in 8i, but you can drop and add column.
just need to preserve the data of the column with primary key column to a new temporary table. drop column. add column. Then insert the data again to the original table using the primary key, then drop temp table.

but first try validating the table, and see after validating if the changes you have made using your script will will still able to sync the tables structure. I have seen ORA-904 error before with ORA-600s error and I use this command.
ANALYZE table tab1 VALIDATE STRUCTURE.

I bounced the instance and all came back to normal.

Thanks everyone for help.