Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c18.75

c18.75

That the princes of this race were very powerful there can be little doubt The rock-cut temples at Elurâ still attest their power and magnificence Under them the worship of the Purâṇic gods rose into much greater importance than before The days when kings and princes got temples and monasteries cut out of the solid rock for the use of the followers of Gotama Buddha had gone by, never to return Instead of them we have during this period temples excavated or constructed on a more magnificent scale and dedicated to the worship of Śiva and Vishṇu Several of the grants of these Râshṭrakûṭa princes praise their bounty and mention their having constructed temples Still, as the Kânheri inscriptions of the reign of Amoghavarsha I show, Buddhism had its votaries and benefactors, though the religion had evidently sunk into unimportance Jainism, on the other hand, retained the prominence it had acquired during the Châlukya period, or even made greater progress Amoghavarsha was, as we have seen, a great patron of it, and was perhaps a convert to it, and some of the minor chiefs and the lower castes, especially the traders, were its devoted adherents The form of Jainism that prevailed in the country was mostly that professed by the Digambara sect A good many of the extant Digambara works were, as we have seen, composed during this period