The Colas c12.94

c12.94

Belief in reincarnation, the effects of karma in successive births and the power of Fate was part of the common basis of all religion in India, and this is clearly seen to have been generally accepted in the Tamil country also. The practice of austerities (*tapas*) was held to be meritorious and productive of great good.¹³⁸ The joyous faith in good living that breathes through the poems of the Śaṅgam age gradually gives place to the pessimistic outlook on life that is, in the last resort, traceable to the emphasis laid by Buddhism on the sorrows of life and its doctrine that the only way of escape was the repression of the will to live. This note of sadness, already traceable in Uṟaiyūr Mudukaṇṇan Sāttanār,¹³⁹ becomes more pronounced in the setting of the *Maṇimēkalai* which contains a round denunciation of the fools who, not meditating upon the ruthlessness of Death, spend their time in the blind enjoyment of carnal pleasures.¹⁴⁰ In all important centres in the Tamil country there were Jaina temples and Buddhist caityas and monasteries in which Buddhist and Jaina monks lived and preached their tenets to those who cared to listen.¹⁴¹ Aṟavaṇavaḍigaḷ, the celebrated Buddhist monk, whom the *Maṇimēkalai* connects successively with Puhār, Vañji, and Kāñcī, even though he may not be a historical figure,¹⁴² may well be looked upon as a type familiar to town-dwellers in those times. We have no means whatever of estimating with any certainty the numbers professing these religions or the extent of their influence in society.