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350
YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
The latter is said to have caused the Lākula-siddhānta to blossom. Further, two inscriptions of 1168 and 1179 compare the rājaguru Vāmasakti with Lakulīśvara or Nakuliśvara. Another record mentions a succession of gurus of the Agastyeśvara Matha at Srīparvata, all whose names end in sakti. T'he Lākula or Pāśupata system is generally mentioned in the Mysore inscriptions in connection with the Kālāmukha sect;' and there is no doubt that the Pasupatas were known as Kälāmukhas in the Kannada country. The technical expression Kalam Karcci (laving the feet) used in Kannada inscriptions on the occasion of making a gift to the teachers of this sect is an indication of the high respect shown to them?. These Kālāmukha Pāśupatas were not certainly identical with the Kālāmukhas mentioned by Yāmuna Muni and Rāmānuja in their enumeration of Saiva sects, as the latter were no better than Kāpālikas.
The mantle of the Pāśupatas appears to have fallen on the Virasaivas to a very great extent in the Kannada country. Many of the great Kālāmukha Mathas seem to have been transformed into Viraśaiva Mathas. The Kālāmukha Matha at Pūvalli, the modern Hüli in the Belgaum District of Bombay Province, which had many branches and a succession of influential abbots, as recorded in a number of inscriptions, is now a Virasaiva Matha, and provides a striking illustration of the process of transformation.
Virasaivism represented a mass movement, and was a more serious rival of Jainism. It was also a movement of social reform, and at variance with orthodox Hinduism in several respects. The rapid expansion of this powerful, hostile sect had an adverse effect on the subsequent history of Jainism in the South. Virasaivism gathered momentum under the inspiring leadership of Basava, the minister of Bijjala (1162–67 A, D.) who had taken possession of the Călukyan throne. Kalyāņa (now in Bidar District, Hyderabad State), the capital of the later Cālukyas, became the centre of direction of the new religious movement. The devotional literature of the Virasaivas known as the Vacanaśāstras composed in Kanarese prose goes back to the eleventh century A.D., about a century earlier than the age of Basava; but the literary and religious movement reached its climax about the middle of the twelfth century during the
1 See Rice: Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions, p. 205. Also Bhandarkar:
Vaisnarism, Saivism and minor religious systems, p. 171. Poona ed. In an inscription of 1177 A. D., for example, certain ascetics are called upholders of the
Lākulāgama-samaya and adherents of the Kālāmukhas. 2 Nandimath: A Handbook of Virsaivism, p. 9. 3 Nandimath (op. cit.), p. 10.
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