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Dr. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar
from there. In the literature of Hinduism relating to the school of Bhakti we come upon frequent references to Jainas and Jaina teaching sometimes described as vociforously hostile, and more often in very much more modified terms as another from of persuasion receiving considerable allegiance from the people and calling for recognition as one of the accepted creeds of the inhabitants of South India. Apart from Pataliputra, (Cuddalore in South Arcot District) and Kanchf, there seems to have been a very great centre of Jains in Madura in the 7th century, a locality round which numbers of far more ancient Jain monuments with the Prakrit inscriptions have also been found. Of course there is a grusome tale of the defeat of the Jains in argument, and of their wholesale persecution by the victorious Saiva saints both in connection with Madura in the 7th century and in the centre of Cuddalore. These blood-curdling tales of persecution may have to be dismissed as pious frauds and exaggerations of the later hagiologists, as we have other evidence of a really more reliable character to indicate that the communities generally lived at peace with one another except for loud contentious and vociforous discussions. If the sectaries would have liked persecution --even that is open to doubt-the rulers were not inclined to permit it, within their own territories. In the course of the eighth century, the centre of importance shifts from South India to the Mahratta country, and in the later period of that century this religion enjoyed the great patronage of the Rashtrakuta rulers for the time being, the most important patron among them being Amogavarsha Nripatunga, who was himself a Jain and is said to have abdicated at the fag-end of a long reign and took leave of life by the performance of the Jain ceremony of Sallekana, gradual starvation to death. Jinaséna and Gunabhadra were two great luminaries who flourished in the reign. With the end of the first millennium the Jains lost political influence perhaps by ceasing to have royal patronage, but remained as still a community in the two sections of pious monks and a lay community coming in for special treatment under the rulers of the time.
One special feature of this we might notice here, the Jaina seem to have been early confounded with the Ajivikas, who were perhaps more anathema to the Jains than even to the Brahmanical sects, and were often spoken of indifferently as one sect. The Jains were known to southern literature, Tamil literature in particular, as Nirgranthas. One
Shatabdi Granth ]
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