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VIJAYANAGARA'S PLEDGE
293 He whom the Saivas worship as śiva, the Vedāntins as Brahmā, the Bauddhas as Buddha, the Naiyāyikas skilled in proof as Karttā, the followers of Jina śāsana as Arhat, Mīmāmsakas as Karma ; that God Keśava ever grant your desires !1 Evidently the people of Karnātaka looked upon all the different religious creeds in the same impartial and sympathetic manner as king Bukka Rāya had done in A.D. 1368.
Nothing proves better the cosmopolitan outlook of the people of Vijayanagara and the abiding effect which king Bukka Rāya's laudable example had on them, than the JõdiKempaņapura (Chāmarājanagara tāluka) inscription, assigned to A.D. 1400, which deals with a great Vira Saiva scholar named Ekānta Basaveśvara. He was the descendant of that famous Ekānta Rāmayya who has already been described in this treatise. One of the birudas of Ekānta Basaveśvara was that he was “an able refuter of the anekāntamata.” But such was the good feeling between the Vīra Śaivas and the Jainas in the Vijayanagara Empire that one of the imprecatory sentences at the end of the above grant says that those who violated it were traitors even to the Jaina religion !2
Indeed, the opening lines of another inscription dated A.D. 1411 reveals the large-heartedness of the people of Vijayanagara. For this record says thus :-Be it well with the subjects : may kings protect the earth in the ways of justice ! May fortune ever be to cows and Brahmans ! May all the world be happy !" Other inscriptions may also be cited in this connection. The record dated A.D. 1472 relating to the Jinālayas in Idugaņi, about which we shall mention some
1. E. C. V. Bl. 3, p. 43. 2. M. A. R. for 1917, p. 61. 3. E. C. XI. Cd. 14, p. 5.
