Jain Journal 1991 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 20

164
The Jains were quite numerous in the South during the reigns of the Hoysala kings, especially in the state of Mysore until the times of Vițala Deva, who seems to have repudiated his religion in favour of Vaiṣṇavism. Macauliffe describes this situation as follows in his section on the "Bhagats of the Granth Sahib-Rämänand":
JAIN JOURNAL
Rāmānuj himself, in order to escape from the fury of Krimi Kantha, took shelter in the court of Bitta or Vitala Deva, the Jain monarch of Dwarsamudra in the Maisur state, who reigned from A.D. 1104 to 1141.1 After a controversy with Ramanuj the king changed his faith and sought the protection of God and his teachings. Filled with new zeal he changed his name also to Vişņu Vardhana and set to work to convert his numerous subjects, who are stated to have been all of the Jain religion. Most of them were converted, but some fled, and the rest the monarch piously put to the sword. In A.D. 1117 the king erected the Belur temple in commemoration of his conversion to Vaiṣṇavism by Ramanuj.
Note:
1. Bitta Deva was king of the Hoysalas who lived on the west of the present Maisur state. Bitta Deva's dynasty ruled Maisur from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. Their capital was Dwarsamudra, now called Halebid, in the Belur district. The Colas and their king lived to the east of the Hoysalas. The Hoysala kings were Jains up to the time of Biṭṭa Deva. Mysore. (Quoted by Macauliffe, Vol. 1 p. 97)
Rice's
It is interesting to note here that while Buddhism, which was a considerable force and a state religion in various jurisdictions, disappeared from the Indian soil with the passage of time, Jainism kept its roots intact in many parts of India. As Thaper (1967: 159) notes, "unlike Jainism, Buddhism had failed to maintain a distinct identity in the Punjab by the time of Guru Nanak. Hiuen Tsang had noticed several Buddhist monasteries in the Punjab. Buddhism, however, was very much on the decline and in actual practice compromised with the Brahmanical religion to such an extent that it could almost have been regarded as a sect of the latter". (cf. Grewal 1969 : 105)
Goswamy (1968: 11) points out that though pockets of Tantric Buddhism could be found in the Punjab hills in the fifteenth century, in the plains it had suffered by then a dilution which was little short of disappearance. (Cited by Grewal 1969: 105)