The Rashtrakutas and their Times c20.127

c20.127

A very regrettable feature of the temple atmosphere was its vitiation by the association of dancing girls. This has been noticed by the foreign travellers of our period as well as of later times (95) and is also proved by epigraphical records. In big temples their number was often to be counted in hundreds. An inscription at the Rājarājeśvara temple, belonging to the beginning of the 11th century, records an order of Rājarāja, transferring as many as 400 dancing girls from the various quarters of his kingdom to the Tanjore temple, and assigning to each of them one veli of land.(96) There is evidence to show that the custom did exist in the Deccan as well; at the Lokamahādevī temple in Pattadkal (Bijapur district) there were dancing girls by the middle of the 8th century; one of them was so rich as to give to the temple-god one horse and one elephant chariot. In the Bhujjabeśvara temple at Hebbal in Dharwar district there were five dancers in the middle of the 10th century, each one being assigned 4 mattars of land for her maintenance. That these dancing girls were not leading pure lives, but had degenerated into women of easy virtue, would be clear from the statement of Marco Polo(97) that a person, who desired to take to the life of a Sanyasin, was tested by his capacity to stand the blandishments of the temple girls who were specially sent to lure him. Marco Polo's testimony no doubt refers to the Malabar of the 13th century, but we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the state of affairs in the Deccan of our period was not far different. In course of time the custom seems to have spread to Buddhist establishments in Greater India. A passage on Kambodia in Chan Ju-kwa states:—' The people are devout Buddhists. There are serving in temples some 300 foreign women. They dance and offer food to Buddha. They are called a-nan or slave dancing girls.'(98)