Indian Antiquary Vol 40

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 230

216
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1911.
we have clear references in ancient Tamil works of the same period, or a little later, to the disputations between the Jainas and Buddhists in other parts of the Dekkan, with varying results. But without proper leaders and with the withdrawal of the royal support, Buddhism seems to have declined gradually after the 7th and 8th centuries A. D. The few that still adhered to it met with further discomfiture at the hands of the Saiva and Vaishnava reformers. The disappearance of Buddhism in southern India is unparalleled in the history of any conntry or time.
It now remains to trace out the causes that led to the decline of Jainism. At this remote age it is not possible to put down chronologically all the forces that worked for the removal of this sect from the country. So far as southern India is concerned, our aim shall be to collect the evidence bearing on the subject, and in this direction we shall have to refer to the literature of the country, that being the main source of getting any reliable information on the point.
There are evidences here to show that corruptions had gradually crept into the two creeds by their contact with people of various customs and methode. Its original purity seems to have been tainted in the course of years by the introduction of undesirable changes which necessarily called forth vehement denunciation. At first, missionary agencies were resorted to for expounding the tenets of the religions and for showing the superiority of the principles inculcated in them. When men embraced the faiths, they did so not out of any compulsion, but from an open conviction. The later followers, not content with the number coming into their fold, seem to have thirsted after conversion; and they appear to have done it by the application of unwarranted influences, such as persecution through officers of State. Number, not faith, seems to have been their aim. Accordingly, people groaned under oppression and looked forward for the appearance of able supporters of their cause, who would not only defend them but expose to the world the inconsistency between the life led by the oppressors and the belief to which they adhered. Time calling forth, produced men of the stamp of Nanasambanda, Tirunavukkarasu (Appar) and Sundara among the Saivites, Nammâlvâr, Madhurakavi and Tirumangai among the Vaishnavites, the great advaita philosopher Samkaracharya and Mânikkavachagar. These men were of no mean merit. Their works show that they were all scholars with wide sympathy for their followers, and of undaunted spirit and high learning, pre-eminently fitted to be the leaders of their community.
The brightest period in Tamil literature is what belongs to the 8th century A. D. and the latter half of the 7th, enriched as it is with thousands of stirring hymns uttered without the slightest effort by a number of men of saintly character, who by their piety and good works are deified as avatáras of celestial beings at the present day, in this land of hero-worship. Their utterances soon acquired sacredness, and provisons were accordingly made by the Dravidian kings for singing their hymns in temples,28 The practice continues to this day, and does not fail to move the heart of the hearers. The appearance of even one of them would have been sufficient to revolutionise the land. What a world of effect the joint efforts of no less than eight of them produced, all in the course of a century and a half, can better be imagined than described. The age of Appar and Ñânasambanda is indicated by the fact that their contemporary, Siruttonda, was the general of the Pallavs king who conquered Vâtâpi (Bâdâmi in the Bombay Presidency). Inscriptions attribute this feat to Narasimhavarman I. (A. D. 648). Tamil works say that Appar lived to a considerably old age, and that the Pallava king of his time, giving ear to the evil counsel of his Jaina adherents, is said to have persecuted at first the saint when he reverted to the Saiva creed 20; but the credit of having converted that Pallava sovereign belongs to no other. This was Mahendravarman, son of Narasim
28 One of the inscriptions of the Chola king Rajaraja, I (A. D. 9E5-1013), found at Tiruvllimilalai and several others traced in other places, provide for the singing of the Tiruppadiyam hymns in temples. An epigraph dis covered at Elavânâsûr in the South Arcot district registers grants made for the recital of Manikkavachagar's celebrated song Tiruchchalal.
29 Some of the hymns of Appar relate his sufferings at the hands of the Jainas and the Pallava king.