Jaina Monuments and Places First Class Importance

Author(s): T N Ramchandran
Publisher: Veer Shasan Sangh Calcutta

Page 24

JUNI MONUMEN IS
SOUTH INDIA
The history of Jainisin in South India "is the history of a. partial attempt to Aryanise thic Dravidian races." This attempt may be sail to commence when Chandragupta Maurya accornpanied Bhadrbahu I to the south a few years before 297 BC. This was followed by other in issions to the south, such as that ol Kālakächārya, a preacher of the Svetāmbara sect who "found his way to the court of the king of Pentha in the Deccan," and who was probably an Andhra king or chief ruling from Paithan, and of Visākháchāiya, a Digambara preacher who "with a group of emigrants penetrated the Chola and Pandya countries." The spread of Jainism and the dissemination of Jaina idcals in the Tamil country received sufficient impetus on the advent of Kundakundáchārya "evidently a Dravidian and the first in almost all the genealogies of the southern Jainas" and is attested to by literary works such as the Kural of Tiruvalļuvar, Manimekhalai and Silappadikāram. The spread of Jainism in the Tamil country is in no sinall measure due to "the patronge it obtained at the courts of Kanchi aud Madura." At the time of the visits of Hiuen Tsiang to these cities, the former had a number of Deva ter ples of which "the majority belonged to the Digambaras" and the latter had in it living a number of Digambaras.
Whatever may be the controversial views entertained by historians to-day on the question of the antiquity of Jainism" and existence of a Jaina period in the History of India" it is. accepted on all hands that from the beginning of the Christian era down to the epoch-making conversion of the Hoysala Vişnuvardhana by the great Vaisnava" Acharya Rāmānuja in the twelfth century, Tainism was the most powerful religion in the South,