Indian Antiquary Vol 46

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

Page 32

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JANUARY, 1917
There is however another version as to the manner of Tirumal Naik's death. It ascribes his alleged tragic and, not to religious policy of soeptical tendency, but to & vile and injudicious love adventure. It is said that the king was in terms of guilty intimaoy with the wife of a priest, and on one occasion, while he was returning in the dark from his stolen visit, he fell into a well in the garden. The priest, in his desire to save his. reputation, resolved on the orime of murder. He promptly filled the well with mud and matter, and crushed the monarch to death.
The discussion of Stones of his death. These and similar stories are believed by some to show that Tirumal Naik did not perhaps die in his bed, but the conflicting versions make a definite pronouncement as to the real manner of his death impossible. The story that he was & martyr to Christianity, and a victim of priestly villainy, is hardly credible. If it had been a fact, the hawkish eyes of the Jesuit missionaries, ready to find fault where there was none and to magnify & mole into a mountain, would hardly have overlooked it. They would in that case, not only oondemn the priesthood before the tribunal of public opinion, but would have written to their masters in Europe, dwelling on the danger which even powerful kings of the stamp of Tirumal Naik had to meet, in case they entertained ideas of heresy and apostaoy. On the other hand, the Jesuit letters of the day clearly state that Tirumal died as he had lived, - "an impenitent sinner.” Tirumal Naik was, it is true, a friend of the Christians, but this was not because of his preference to Christianity, but because of that enlightened policy of religious toleration which he inherited from his ancestors. Himself a bigoted Saiva, he never believed that a regard for one's own beliefs was genuine only if accompanied by active injury to those who held different beliefs. His superiority to religious prejudice is evidenced by his friendly attitude to the Muhammadans as much as to the Christians. The latter were, it is true, not only permitted to enjoy the free exercise of their religion, but encouraged in their proselytising work. When Robert De Nobilis converted many of the turbulent Kallas from barbarism to Christianity and predatory life to honest livelihood, Tirumal appreciated the work and gave large areas of land to the converts for cultivation. Nevertheless, in spite of such liberality, we can positively assert that Tirumal had no Christian tendencies whatever. His death came eight years after the departure of Robert de Nobilis from Madura, and where a Nobilis had failed to persuade, others could soarooly have succeeded. The theory of priestly villainy and Christian martyrdom is thus a pure myth, not history; a creation of the imagination, not a substantial fact. It is based on a wrong notion of the fundamental basis of Hindu polity. The beliefs, interests, institutions, advisers, subjects, and queens of Tirumal Náik, in fact, everybody and everything around him would have been a standing obstacle to his conversion. To give up his religion would be, for a Hindu king, to give up his crown, so inalienable was, as it still is, the bond between royalty and religion, between the State and the Church.
(To be continued.)
NOTES AND QUERIES. CORRUPTIONS OF ENGLISH IN THE hadel hay, the Marathi soldiers corruption of INDIAN VERNACULARS.
"shoulder arms, copied from the methods of "HAPELKAPTI" is commonly used in Marathi pronunciation adopted by British non-commisNowspapers to convey the idea of smartness. sionbd officers. This puzzling expression is a derivative from
E. WILBERTOBCE-BELL