Jaina Literature in Tamil

Author(s): A Chakravarti, K V Ramesh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 38

JAINA LITERATURE IN TAMIL
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called Naladiyar ; and this tradition is generally accepted in the south both among the Jainas and the nonJainas. This fact also supports the view that even before the migration of Bhadrabāhu there must have been Jaina princes in the Tamil land. This naturally creates a problem as to the exact period of the migration of the Jainas to the Tamil land and what occasioned this. But it is enough for our purpose if we maintain that the introduction of Jainism in the south must be somewhere prior to the 4th century B. C. This view is in conformity with the conclusions obtained by the Tamil scholars after careful research. Mr. Sivaraja Pillai in his Chronology of the Early Tamils writes about the early Tamilians : “Before their contact with the Aryans, Dravidians, as I have elsewhere pointed out, were mainly engaged in buildng up material civilişiation and securing for themselves the many amenities of life, individual and communal. Naturally, therefore, their lives took on a secular colour and came to be reflected as such in the literature of that period. The impulse of religion, which came to possess them at a later period, was then absent. And when the first infiltration of the Aryans began, the Jains and Buddhists
1. P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar : History of the Tamils (1929), p. 246; P. B. Desai : op. cit., pp. 25-26; M. S. Venkataswamy: S'ainanamum Tamilum (1959), pp. 36-40.
2 K. N. Sivaraja Pillai : Chronology of the Early Tamils (1932), pp. 15-19.