Mahavira and his Teaching

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

Page 344

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVAN MAHAVIRA'S CULT 337
Tamils ? Our answer is an emphatic ‘no!'. It is true that, as a denominational congregation of people with mundane vested interests, it is almost extinct, with but 0.08 per cent of the population of Tamil Nadu surviving (1972 census). But the immortal spirit behind it,--the cults of ahimsā, ahatyā, asteya, matsya-māmsamadya-vivarjana, nityakarmānuşthāna and, not the least of all, profound faith in asceticism as a cleanser of sins and as a means of supermanhood,-these have only been temporarily eclipsed. But, having taken roots invisibly, they survive unobtrusively, but with tenacity. In the hereditary vegetarian and non-violent rites, rituals and habits of the South Indian Brāhmins and Pillaimārs, evoking sub-conscious deference from the rest of the population, even though provoking psycho-complexes in a few.
97. Social history tells us that the remote North Indian ancestors of the modern South Indian Brāhmin had been partly non-vegetarian in their food intakes. It was only after later impacts with the cult of the Jina in the South that the Southern Brāhmaṇa absorbed, with fanatic zeal, almost all the puritan dinacaryās of the Bhagavān's canon, styling themselves 'Drāvidas', among the Pancha-Drāvida-Brāhmanas,-Gujarāti, Māhārāshtri, Tailanga, Kannadiga and Drāvida,-in contra-distinction to the 'Pancha-Gaudas' of the North. 98. Of all the areas of India, Keraļa and Tamil Nadu were the earliest to abolish animal sacrifices within the Hindu temples, and no punitive measure was found necessary to enforce the legislation. The habit of smoking is still foreign to the mores of the Southern Dwijas. Prohibition too would have continued with success if alien political forces had not intervened.
99. The earliest Piļļaimārs of the extreme South were the descendents of the followers of the Saivite saint Appar, who had come back to the Hindu fold after their short sojourn within the Jaina church. Non-Brāhmins by caste, they were very strict vegetarians and claim to have been so long before the Brahmins took to it. The term 'Pillai' itself, now suffixed to the personal names of most of the non-Brahmin communities, including the M.M.-43