The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.53

c19.53

Besides temples, there were *mathas* representing different sects of Hinduism which were also recipients of several gifts from the king and the people of the country, some of which have been incidentally touched upon. There is some reason to believe that the class of *Ēkadaṇḍa sannyāsins* was rather influential in the south of the Pāndya country. Their presence in the Vēdavyāsamatha in the Bhaktavatsala temple in Śērmādēvi is mentioned in one record (No. 544 of 1911), and another (No. 435 of 1906) refers to a similar institution in Murappunāḍu, near Tinnevelly.² Buddhism and Jainism seem also to have survived to the middle ages; they must have carried on an obscure existence; yet there is some reason to think that Jainism had a little more importance than Buddhism. In a record (No. 113 of 1904) from Tiruccōpurm (South Arcot) dated in the reign of Jaṭāvarman alias Tribhuvanacakravartin Sundara Pāndya, a certain Śāriputtira Paṇḍita figures as a donor and there is a reference to ‘Śangattār’ most probably members of the Buddhist Sangha. A record (No. 358 of 1908) from Māṅgāḍu (Chingleput) of the reign of the famous Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāndya (acc. A.D. 1251) contains a gift of land as *Palliccandam* to a certain Palli—a Jain temple—whose name is illegible. An inscription from Pudukottah (No. 367 of 1904—Ammāsattram) of a certain Sundara Pāndya mentions one Dharmadēva Ācārya as the pupil of Kanakacandrapaṇḍita. Although the second name is in part a conjectural restoration, there seems to be little reason to doubt that we have here the names of two Jaina Acāryas of the time.