Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 340

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVĀN MAHĀVĪRA'S CULT 333
have come to learn the bitter lesson that pomp and pageantry not only win political elections but also bull-doze spiritual attainments.
87. It must, however, be said to the credit of the abovementioned rulers that they never swerved from their policy of religious toleration. The emperor Rājarāja's own sister, Kunadvai, was a staunch Jaina, who had endowed richly Jaina monasteries. Rājarāja himself seems to have supplemented the above endowments with his own donations. Anapāya Kulottunga was a lover of Jaina kathā literature. The Chera empreror, Sthāņu Ravi, gave his daughter in marriage to a Jaina warrior, Vijayarāga Deva. Tiruttakka Devar, the famous Jaina composer of 'JivakaChintāmanı', was an younger brother of a Chola king. There were, of course, caste conflicts, but not many persecutions of nonHindus.
88. Inter-religious impacts, however, inevitably result in mutual absorptions of each other's doctrines and practices. When, in the age of the Mauryas, the manufacture of divine image and their sales became a nationalised industry, (according to 'Mahābhāş ya'), the Jainas too did not lag behind. Their monasteries and paļļis were studded with Bas-reliefs of the forms of their Tirthankaras, their symbols and their attendant Yakşas and Yaksinīs. Indra, Kubera and other Hindu Gods also were included among the Parivāra-devatas. The images of Sarasvati and Lakşmi were not ignored. And this convention naturally percolated to the land of the Tamils within a few decades. 89. This veneration for Hindu gods attracted Hindus also to the Jaina Paļlis. But the latter vaguely equated Pārsvanātha with their ‘Anantakrsņa', and Rsabha Deva with their Bhiksātana Siva of the bull-mount whom they also called 'Adideva' and ‘Digambara'. The various attendant Yaksīs were equated by them with their 'Śaktīs'. (Yakşi-Isakki Saktı). In many Tamil villages there are images of Padmāvati-devi, shadowed by the hoods of five-headed serpents, worshipped as Māri-amman. At Periya-Pāļayam, a village some miles distant from Madras, there is a tell-tale rite surviving still. The devotees circumambulate the