Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): D C Sirkar
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 67

52
RELIGION AND CULTURE OF THE JAINS
equivalent of the 22nd regnal year of a Simhavarman as 380= 458 A.D. It also lends additional support in fixing the beginnings of Jain history (the only literary evidence before the Tēvārām) in about the 5th century A.D.,' for it was copied by one Sarvanandin, a Jain, teacher in Paṭalikā (Pāṭalipura or Tiruppadirippuliyūr near Cuddalore in the South Arcot District) where a Jain monastery existed at least from the middle of the 5th century till probably the first half of the 7th, the period of Appar or Tirunavukkarasar, one of the Tēvāram trio. 10
The above survey of evidences available from epigraphy and literature regarding the initial appearance of Jainism in Toṇḍaimandalam has been necessary to establish (1) that the religion spread there much later than in the southernmost districts, probably after the 4th century A.D., and (2) that the religion could not have spread in the area through Andhradeśa as suggested by Dr. P. B. Desai.11 More than all this, the Jain epigraphs in this region become more numerous only after the 7th century and, curiously enough, belong to that period, i.e. 8th and 9th centuries (and also later under the Cōlas in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries), which followed the oft-quoted conversion of the royal benefactor, Mahendravarman I (c. 600-30 A,D.), from Jainism to Saivism, inspired by the conversion of Appar to Śaivism, as one of the causes for the decline of the Jain faith.
The religious conflict between the exponents of the Bhakti cult and the so-called 'heterodox' Buddhists and Jains is said to have raged between the 7th and 9th centuries A.D.* and, if
8 Ibid., p. 43.
9 R. Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanci, p. 12.
10 P. B. Desai says that the Dravida-sangha existed at Patalipura as early as the 1st century B. C. (op. cit., p. 49). This is not acceptable.
11 Desai, op. cit., pp. 25, 32.
*[From about the beginning of the 5th century, the Pallava kings claim to have been Kali-yuga-dos-avasanna-dharm-oddharana-nitya-sannaddha
which apparently refers to Brāhmaṇical success against Buddhism and Jainism. Cf. Sircar, Suc. Sat., pp. 196-97.-Ed.].