The Colas c25.13

c25.13

One circumstance worthy of some attention is the paucity of references to Vedic sacrifices performed by the monarchs of the period. The *aśvamēdha* occurs only once and that in the inscriptions of Rājādhirāja. The poems of the Śangam age doubtless imply that such costly Vedic rituals were more common in that age. More emphasis seems to be laid in this period on *dāna*, gift, in preference to *yāga*, sacrifice. Occasions for such gifts are multiplied not only by the elaborate organisation of temples and worship in them, and the studied effort to group all social amenities round the temple as a nucleus, but by the newer means of obtaining religious merit enjoined on the rich in general, and on royalty in particular, such as the *tulā-* *bhāra*, the *hiraṇyagarbha* and so forth. It is one of the most remarkable achievements of mediaeval Hinduism to have harnessed the religious emotions of man in the effective service of society. The temple and the *maṭha* flourishing on *dāna* (gifts) together with the *agrahāra*, the *caturvēdimangalam* of the Cōḷa inscriptions, are the most typical expressions of this phase of South Indian religion. The Jain *paḷḷis* and the Bauddha *vihāras* also derived benefit from this general movement.