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THE EVIDENCE OF TRADITION. 15 Jaina Rajas ruled here among whom the Kollūru Kaiphiyat mentions Jayasimħa, Malla Dēva, Sõmidēva, Pērmādi Dēva, Singi Dēva and the Vengi king 'Vishnuvardhana. That a place is called basti at a more advanced stage of social development than palli is evidenced by the Kanaparru Kaiphiyat. The village. Kanaparru was originally a Hindu foundation. Subsequently the Jainas came and occupied it. They developed the village, built several homesteads and jinālayas and “made the village into a basti.” The word basti is also used in the Kaiphiyats in the sense of a Jaina shrine. It is derived from Sanskrit Vasati=a dwelling place (Cf. nivēsanam=house-site). Popular fancy treats it as a Hindustāni word but it can be traced in Jaina inscriptions quite earlier than the Muhammadan advent.
Such very early Jaina foundations of the Andhra-Karnāta dēsa are so subtlely disguised very often by the theological zeal and ingenuity of the latterday Hindu revivalists, that, while Disguised the fact illustrates the absorbing catholicity of the latter, it confuses all traces of historic continuity. For the glimmerings of such continuity almost the only source of material authoritative is the collection of Kaiphiyats in the Mackenzie manuscripts of the Oriental Library of the Madras Museum. It remains, for the South Indian epigraphist and archæologist, a sacred duty to follow up the suggestions offered by these glimmerings of ancient tradition and
Jainism.
