The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c11.19

c11.19

A detailed study of the various movements of this heroic age of religion in South India is outside the scope of this history. But some attention must be given to that part of the legendary accounts of the age which centres round Madura and the Pāndya country, and an attempt made to estimate the influence of the revival of Hinduism on the Pāndya country. We have seen some reason to think that Mānikkavāśagar, the great antagonist of Buddhism, was among the earliest of the great saints of this age. It is very likely that the period of his ministry was sometime before the restoration of the Pāndya rule under Kadungōn. This fervid devotee of Śiva had his birth in the Pāndya country, and started in life as a high officer of the Pāndya king; the scene of his chief triumphs against the Buddhists was Chidambaram, and there is some reason to think that the Pāndyan power extended to Chidambaram in his day. It is remarkable that the sage ends his contest with the Buddhists by admitting the discomfited opponents into the fold of Śaivism and that as Pope has observed ‘no mention is made of the use of any violent measures’. The greatest achievement of the sage,—this is true also of many others like him in this period—was the propagation of his faith by means of fervid popular songs which were unique in their lyrical beauty and the simplicity and directness of their appeal to the human heart. The name of Tirugnānasambandar, whom Śaivites regard as the greatest of Śaiva saints of this age, is connected with the story of a miraculous cure worked on a Pāndya king who may be identified, as we have seen, with Arikēsari Parānkuśa, who ruled in the second half of the seventh century A.D. Later legend makes the occasion a turning point in the history of orthodox Śaivism in the Pāndya country. The king was a Jain and the whole land was taking to the heretical doctrine after him; and it was only the devotion of the queen, who was a Chola princess, and the minister Kulaccirai that saved the situation by sending word to the great saint of Shiyāli begging him to come and reclaim the land by combating the Jains and putting an end to their influence over the king. It is needless to narrate the story of what followed, as it is sufficiently known. But it must be stated that there is little ground for the view that many Jains were put to a cruel death on the occasion. The Tamil Purāṇas indeed say that 8,000 Jains were impaled on stakes; but this seems apocryphal. At any rate the saint Sambanda does not seem to be connected with the employment of violent measures and what troubles the Jains experienced seem to have been at the hands of the secular power.¹ Indeed, at the end of the contest with the Śaiva saint, we learn that the Jains still continued defiant, and unlike the Buddhist opponents of Māṇikkavāśagar at Chidambaram, these Jains of Madura refused to embrace the faith of their victorious opponent when he invited them to do so.