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MEDIÆVAL JAINISM The different provinces of the Andhradeśa, Karnātaka, and the Tamil land, however, had their own specific causes which contributed to the decline of Jainism. Of these we may dispense with those relating to the Telugu land where Jainism was never so deeply rooted as in the south, and especially in Karnāțaka. However, we may observe that the continued support which the Eastern Cālukyas always gave Jainism, especially at Bezwada, was promptly counterbalanced by the Paricchedi-Pasupati rulers of that same city, who were the avowed followers of the Hindu dharma. These and the Kota kings of Dhānyakațaka and the Kākatīyas of Warangal, as Seshagiri Rao has so well shown, were responsible for the disappearance of Jainism from the Andhradeśa. The worst time the Jainas had in thc Telugu land was in the reign of king Ganapatideva, the Kākatiya ruler of Warangal (A.D. 1199- A.D. 1260), when, as a result of the defeat in a religious disputation at the hands of Tikkana Somayya, the author of the Telugu Mahābhārata, the Jainas lost all their prestige and power.
The evil days on which Jainism fell in the Tamil land were due to the appearance of the saiva and Vaişņava saints long before the local rulers had driven it into the background in the Andhradeśa. The Saiva Nāyanārs and the Vaişnava Āļvārs had recourse to six methods, which they seem to have borrowed from the Jainas themselves, to subvert the religion of the latter in the Tamil land. Firstly, the Saivas and the Vaişņavas counteracted the universal effect of the most potent
1. Seshagiri Rao, op. cit., pp. 21-29. If it is true that Tikkana was the minister of Mahāmandalesvara Madhurāntaka Pottapi Coļa Tilakanārāyana Manuma Reddi, as Seshagiri Rao asserts, then he may be placed in about A.D. 1243. For a record dated $. 1165 mentions a gift by a citizen in the reign of that Nellore seudatory. Rangacharya, Top List, II. p. 1143.
