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243
CRITICAL TIMES fifth or sixth century A.D.1
Circumstances narrated elsewhere in this treatise point to a bitter campaign which the saiva saints launched against the teachers of the anekāntamata in the south. This may have been in the tenth and eleventh century A.D., when as a result of the Saivite revival the influence of the Jainas in Madura was once and for ever shattered. But there were other parts of the southern peninsula where Jainism continued to live long after the days of the great Jñānasamandhar and other well known saiva saints.
One of these was Vallimalai, near Tiruvallam in the Wandiwash tāluka of the North Arcot district. Kannada rccords in the Grantha characters prove the importance of this place as a Jaina stronghold in the ninth and tenth century A.D. The Ganga king Rācamalla Satyavākya I, the son of Ranavikrama (i.c., Vijayāditya, Raņavikrama) and grandson of king Śrīpuruşa, built a basadi on Vallimalai.? Another record also in Kannada but in Grantha characters mentions the setting up of an image of Devasena, the pupil of Bhavānandi. Devasena was the guru of an unidentified Bāņa king. The work of setting up the above image was done by a Jaina sage cailed Aryanandi, also known as Ajjanandi. It cannot be made out whether this was the samc Ajjanandi who is called “the glorious" in a Vatteluttu inscription in characters of the tenth or eleventh cen
1. About a century later Sūļāmaņi, a celebrated Jaina work, may have been composed by Tõlāmoļittēva in the reign, it is said, of Sendan (Jayanta), the grandson of Kadungon. M. Srinivasa Ayyangar, Tamil Studies, p. 219.
2. 91 of 1889; 6 of 1895. 3. 7 of 1895 Rangachari, Top. List, I, p. 120. 4. 8 of 1895
