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CHAPTER 19
SOUTH INDIA
POPULARITY OF JAINISM
THE PERIOD BETWEEN 600 AND 1000 WITNESSED AN ACTIVE BUILD-UP OF Jaina institutions, great and small, in the south as in the Deccan, simultaneously with the rise of Saiva and Vaisnava institutions and their temples, in spite of sectarian antagonism that started in the Tamil country with the advent of the Saiva and Vaisnava saints-the Nayanmārs and Alvārs. The Jainas were widespread, and that almost every village had a considerable Jaina population is attested by the ruins, other extant antiquities and references to Jaina temples and institutions of endowments to them in the hundreds of inscriptions in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. It is only after 1000, particularly after the conversion of Hoysala Viṣṇuvardhana from Jainism to Vaiṣṇavism by Rāmānuja and the growth and rise of the Lingayat Saivism, that Jainism weakened in the Kannada and adjoining Telugu areas.
ROCK-CUT TEMPLES IN TAMIL NADU
Rock-cut Jaina cave-temples in the Tamil country date from the seventh century. They are usually found in the hills which had been earlier occupied by the Jaina ascetics as early as the second century B.C.' and some of which continued to be important Jaina centres till late medieval times. There are also quite a few instances of their conversion into Saiva and Vaisnava centres.
With commodious caverns with shrines and cells built of brick and mortar, many of these hill-establishments formed important centres of monasteries and nunneries. It is in such places that the Pallavas and Pandyas excavated their numerous rock-cut temples, some of which were originally Jaina but were later converted into Brāhmaṇical centres.
Because of the lesser tractability of the stone available in these parts (granite, gneiss, charnokite, etc.) and hence of the differences in the
[1 See above, chapter 9.-Editor.]
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