Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

SR No.: 001609
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 566
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Story, Literature, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

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510
YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
his Nyahe tenth ceminent in the
a devoted friend of the Cola prince Rājāditya, turned ascetic after the death of the latter on the battlefield (see p. 2), and became a mahāvratin, under the name of Caturānana Pandita, and the head of the matha at Tiruvorriyūr (Chingleput district). It is difficult to explain why the Kālāmukha ascetics are styled here as mahāvratin, which is the usual name for Kāpālikas (see p. 358). It is true that the Kālāmukhas are sometimes described as a sect very much akin to the Kāpālikas who were notorious for their evil practices. But the Kālāmukhas of the Mysore and Cola inscriptions were followers of the Pāśupata system, and could hardly have been affiliated to the degenerate Kālāmukha sect mentioned by Yamuna Muni and Rāmānuja. It is, of course, not impossible that among the members of the Kālāmukha Pāśupata sect there were a few who might have adopted the Kāpālika way of life and figured as the Kālāmukhas stigmatized by the Vaisnava teachers.
The Kālāmukha teachers described in the Cola inscriptions as Mahāvratins might be same as the Mahāpāśupatas mentioned by Udayana in his Nyāya-kusumāñjali, which was composed in north India towards the end of the tenth century, about the time when the Kālāmukha Pāśupatas were becoming prominent in the south. We have noted (p. 241 ) that the commentators on Nyāyakusumāñjali explain Mahāpāśupatas as those Pāśupatas who observe mahāvrata or the great vow. "A certain amount of doctrinal affinity seems to have existed as between the Pāśupatas and the Kāpālikas (see p. 241 ); but it seems certain that mahāvrata did not exclusively mean the Kāpālika cult, and the term mahāvratin was applied also to the Kālāmukha Pasupata teachers of the south.
We learn from Sastri: Colas (op. cit.) that a chieftain named Vikramakesari presented a big matha to a Kālāmukha teacher named Mallikārjuna who was his guru, and gave him also eleven villages attached to the matha for the maintenance of fifty Asita-vaktra, that is, Kālāmukha ascetics. Vikramakesari belonged to Kodumbālür (Pudukkottah) and was an ally of the Cola king Parāntaka II who ruled after 953 A. D. On p. 359 we have connected Mallikarjuna with the disreputable Kālāmukha sect; but in the light of the evidence furnished by the Cola inscriptions, it will be more appropriate to suppose that he was one of the Kālāmukha Pāśupata teachers who figure so prominently in the religious life of the south from about the tenth century onwards. These teachers, respected and patronized by kings, and in charge of monastic establishments, could hardly be supposed to have belonged to a sect akin to the Kāpālikas merely on account of the similarity of names.