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10
A. CHAKRAVARTI :
religion and hence they freely mixed with the aboriginal people of the land. This is again borne out by the fact of their friendly relations with the aboriginal people. The people of the land against whom the Aryans had to fight their way were called Dasyus, who, though described in uncomplementary terms elsewhere, are all described with a certain amount of respect in Jaina literature. To give one single illustration the monkeys and Rākşasas who figure in Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa are all described as Vidyadharas in the Jaina Rāmāyaṇa.' It is also clear from the Jaina literature that kşatriya heroes belonging to the Āryan clan freely married the princesses from the Vidyadhara clan. Such a matrimonial alliance, most probably contracted for military and political reasons, must have paved the way for the introduction of the ahimsă doctrine among the original inhabitants of the land. Some such reason must be assumed as the cause for the migration of the people from the north to the Tamil country and for introducing their culture, based upon ahimsā. The orthodox school of the Aryans must have appeared in the field of the Tamil country much later as is quite clear from the fact of later Hindu revivalism which led to the downfall of Jaina supremacy in the South.
The migration of the Jainas to South India is generally supposed 2 to be at the time of Bhadrabāhu,
1 Winternitz : op. cit., Vol. II (1933), p. 491.
2 The Bhadrabāhu-Candragupta tradition is of a fairly ancient origin. The Bșhatkathakośa of Harişēņa, a Sanskrit work of the 10th century, the Bhadrabāhucarita of Ratnanandi,
(Contd.)
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