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- NALADIYAR.
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community has existed from the earliest times. Here are fine old Armenian and Portuguese churches ; and a Christian inscription of the 5th century. Here Pantaenus of Alexandria taught ; and we are quite warranted in imagining Tiruvalluvar, the thoughtful poet, the eclectic, to whom the teaching of the Jains was as familiar as that of every Hindu sect, who was not hindered by any caste prejudices from familiar intercourse with foreigners, whose one thought was to gather , knowledge from every source, whose friend, the sea-captain, would bring him tidings of every stranger's arrival (coming from Ceylon, perhaps, in his own dhoney) : we may fairly, I say, picture him pacing along the seashore with the Christian teachers, and imbibing Christian ideas, tinged with the peculiarities of the Alexandrian school, and day by day working them into his own wonderful Kurral.”
2. Nāladiyār.-Nāladiyār, another Jain work,' is an anthology containing 400 quatrains in 40 chapters. It stands in the estimation of the Tamils, next to Kural. It treats about the transitoriness of wealth and other vanities of human wishes. It lays special importance on the cultivation of virtue and truth and the possession of saintly character. There is a tradition regarding the composition of Naladiyār. Validiyar : The story goes : Once upon a time, 8,000 Jain sages visited the Pandyan kingdom during a period of famine in their own native place. When the famine ended and when better days
its tradition
