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CRITICAL TIMES
279 north-eastern part of the Coļa country. The great Nāyanārs and the Aļvars have left behind them, however, in their hymns evidence of their utter contempt for Jainism.2 But what is surprising is not that contemporary Saiva and Vaişnava saints should have pictured darkly the Jainas in their religious works, but that the traditionally generous Hindu mind should have portrayed in a series of frescoes on the walls of the Golden Lily Tank of the well known Minākşi temple at Madura, the darker and sadder side of the struggle between the vanquished Jaina leaders and the exultant Hindu reformers of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Here on the walls of the same temple are found paintings depicting the persecution and impaling of the Jainas at the instance of Tirujñānasambandhar. And what is still more unfortunate is that even now the whole tragedy is gone through at five of the twelve annual festivals at that famous Madura temple !3
Such vengeance did not characterize the reappearance of Hindu reformers in Karnataka. Here the downfall of Jainism was brought about by four important factors which were peculiar to Karnāțaka. In the first place, the political downfall of the royal patrons who had for centuries fostered
1. Ramaswami, ibid, pp. 62-67, 71. Ramaswami says that Appar converted the Pallava king Mahendravarma II, the son of Narasimhavarmā I, from Jainism. (Ibid, p. 66). But this is extremely doubtful, since we are not sure that Mahendravarma II ever ruled at all. For in the Vēlūrpālaiyam plates which give the genealogy of the Pallava rulers (Ep. Rep. S. Circle for 1911, p. 61), he is not mentioned. Even if he did, his reign was very short (Dubreuil, Ancient History of the Deccan, p. 70; Subrahmanya Aiyer, Sketches, p. 42.)
2. Read Ramaswami, ibid, pp. 61, see, 67-70 ; Subrahmanya Aiyer, ibid, p. 38, n. (3)
3. Ramaswami, ibid, p. 79.
