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CRITICAL TIMES
217 some of the major centres of Jainism. Here we shall be concerned with the account of some of the minor seats of that religion which will enable us to understand the story of its struggle in the south, and to appreciate the stand it took in the age when the great mediæval Empire of Vijayanagara was founded.
There is every reason to believe that the anekāntamata radiated to the southern centres from its strongholds in Karnātaka. But it must be admitted at the same time that considerable uncertainty prevails in regard to the question of the exact age when Jainism was introduced in the Tamil land, and the names of the great teachers who were instrumental in propagating the tenets of the Jina dharma." We meet with many references to Jainism and to a sect which has been identified with a sect of that religion, in certain works ascribed to the early period of Tamil literature. Mr. Ramaswami Ayyangar pointed out long ago detailed references to Jainism in the famous Tamil works which belong to the so-called sangham age, viz., Toskāp
1. Devacandra's statement that Vísākhamuni, the immediate disciple of Bhadrabāhu (who is supposed to have died in B.C. 297), travelled in the Cola and Pandya lands and spread the Jina dharma, as given in his Rājāvasikathe, is rightly doubted by Mr. M. S. Ramaswami Ayyangar (Studies in South Indian Jainism, pp. 20, 32), because Devacandra's testimony is not supported by any other source. But Mr. Ramaswami assumes that the lithic record in the Brahmi script, found in the Ramnad and Madura districts, and assigned by the Madras Government Epigraphist to the beginning of the third century B.C. (Ep. Report of the Southern Circle for 1907, pp. 60-61), probably were Jaina inscriptions ; and that the Jaina Sages may have commenced their preaching of the Jina doctrine in the Tamil land in that remote age. Studies, pp. 33-35.
