Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 55

JAINISM
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mars, lexicons, books on rhetoric and on medicinethese are to be found in immense numbers and have been adopted wholesale in India. The well known Amarakosha, for instance, is a Jaina work that every student of Samskṛt learns from beginning to end.
I said the Jainas came to Southern Indiaspreading downwards through the whole of the southern part of the peninsula; we find them giving Kings to Madura, to Trichinopoly and to many another city in Southern India. We find not only that they thus give rulers; but we find they are the founders of Tamil literature. The Tamil grammar, said to be the most scientific grammar that exists, is a Jaina production. The popular grammar, Namal, by Pavanandi, is Jaina, as is Naladiyar. The famous poet Tiruvalluvar's Kural, known I suppose to every Southerner, is said to be a Jaina work, for this reason, that the terms he uses are Jaina terms. He speaks of the Arhats; he uses the technical terms of the Jaina religion, and so he is regarded as belonging to the Jaina faith.
The same is true of the Canarese literature; and it is said that from the first century of the Christian Era to the twelfth, the whole literature of Canara is dominated by the Jainas. So great then were they in those days.
Then there came a great movement throughont Southern India, in which the followers of Mahadeva, Shiva, came preaching and singing through the country, appealing to that deep emotion of the human heart, bhakti, which the Jaina had too much