Book Title: Mahavira and his Teaching
Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti
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304 K. A. NĪLAKAŅŢA ŠĀSTRI & V. RĀMASUBRAMAŅIAM, ‘AUNDY etymological and literary aspects of the Tamil language, the emphasis was on the pedantic 'sentamil' (purified Tamil).
18. As in all primitive cultures, the schoolmaster, besides the medicine-man and the priest, was the most respected individual. And the Tamil Jaina monks were all the three combined into one. Their fundamental religious tenets too were universal, non-sectarian and easily understandable; viz. not to injure life, not to steal, not to tell an untruth and not to own property. And when Bhadrabahu's insistence on life-long chastity and nudity was added, the psychological effect was simply marvelous. 'Tuṛavikku Vendan Turumbu' (the king is but a trash to a hermit) had been one of the oldest of Tamil adages.
19. Hemacandra, in his 'Parisiṣṭa Parva', (XI-vv. 63, 102) tells us that Aśoka's grandson, Samprati, was a staunch Jaina and that he not only built Jaina temples and organized festivals all over India, but also sent Jaina missionaries to the land of the Tamils. This information helps us to explain the continuity of link between the Jaina churhes of the North and the South from the time of Bhadrabahu. It also proved the plausibility of the southerner Samantabhadra's oratorical 'Digvijayas' in North Indian cities.
III. The Sangham Age:
20. The first four centuries of the Christian era are collectively called 'The Sangham Age', because a literary 'Academy' of scholars and poets, called 'The Tamil Sangham', is said to have flourished at Madurai, the Pandyan capital, in that epoch. Its very title 'Sangham', indicates that its constitution had been patterned on the then existing Jaina and Buddhist religious Sanghas of the region. A good number of remarkable masterpieces of Tamil literature, ascribable to that epoch, have come down to us. Although their themes are mostly panegyric, lyrical, or ethical, some of them contain historical material, though not actual history. The mysterious lull of inscriptional activities, after their first appearance in the Tamil-Brahmī Jaina cave Epigraphs seems, to
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