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PRINCELY PATRONAGE
95
zens (named) made grants of specified land also for the same basadi.1
We may now pass on to the contribution of two powerful families which were instrumental in the propagation of the Jina faith in the south. These were the Kongālvas and the Cangāļvas. Of these the former were more influential than the latter. The Kongāļvas ruled over the Kongalnād 8,000 Province which comprised the Yēļusāvira country in the north of Coorg and the Arkalgūļ tāluka in the south of the Hassan district of Mysorc. Although its early history can be traced to the time of the Ganga prince Ereyappa in about A.D. 880,2 yet Kongalnād as a political unit came into prominence only in the first quarter of the eleventh century A.D., when in A.D. 1004 the great Tamil general named Pancava Mahārāya received from his royal master Rāja Rāja as a reward for his services Mālavvi (mod. Mālambi in Coorg) along with the title of Ksatriyaśikhāmani-Kongālva.3
For one century the Kongāļvas and their officials fostered the Jina dharma in their principality. In about A.D. 1050 we merely come across evidence of the devotion of a nobleman under Kongăsva, by name Ayya of Kiviri, the lord of Maduvanganād, who keeping the vow (of sallekhanā, evidently) for twelve days in the Cangāļva basadi, expired. The same inscription speaks of Bīļiya Seçți, who may have been the head of the merchant guild, as dying at the feet of all the yatis.
That the Kongāļvas themselves were Jainas there can be no doubt. In A.D. 1058 Rajendra Kongāļva granted for the basadi (probably the Pārsvanātha basadi at Mulļūru, Nidutada hõbļi, Coorg) made by his father, lands in many speci.
1. E. C. XII, Ck. 21, pp. 77-78. 2. Rice, My. & Coorg, p. 144. 3. Ibid. 4. E. C. IX, Cg. 30, p. 172.
