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The Colas c33: Chapter XXV. Religion

The Cōḷas c33

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Chapter XXV. Religion

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The temple and the *maṭha* were the two great gifts of mediaeval Hinduism to Southern India. It was under the Cōḷas that these institutions entered on a process of gradual expansion and adaptation, which attracted the imagination of the populace and the benefactions of the rich; they thus reached a secure position of ascendancy over the Buddhist *vihāra* and Jain *paḷḷi*, and this position they retained almost unimpaired till our own time. In the stress of the conflict with heretical rivals who denied the sanctity of the Veda and questioned the existence of the Deity, there arose within Hinduism a tendency to close up its ranks, and foster a religious syncretism which found room within the fold of its orthodoxy for all forms of theistic belief. This syncretism was based on the conception of Trimūrti, the threefold manifestation of the same godhead.

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In the eighth and ninth centuries, Southern India produced the two great Hindu champions Kumārila and Śaṅkara who fought the battle of ancient Brahmanism against heresy, though there was ‘little persecution in our sense of the word’.¹ The stories of persecution are late popular legends that were put into melodious verse by the pious credulity of the author of the *Periya Purāṇam*. Under the leadership of Śaṅkara, Hinduism absorbed many of the distinctive features of the speculative system and the practical organisation of latter day Buddhism. This is the chief reason why, on the one hand, Buddhism was so completely banished from Southern India in later times, and on the other, the opponents of Śaṅkara’s system found it easy to stigmatise him as a Buddhist in disguise.

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The battle against heresy had been joined, however, long before Śaṅkara’s day by the great Śaiva Nāyanārs and the Vaiṣṇava Āḻvārs. The ‘emotional theism’ of these masters of popular song, ‘running in the parallel channels of Viṣṇuism and Śaivism’ is in many ways the most characteristic product of Tamil religious experience. The great work done by these holy men who traversed the whole of the Tamil land several times over, singing, preaching and organising, has ever since been treasured by a grateful posterity in beautiful legends which are significant even in their anachronisms. One such tale is that of a friendly meeting between Ñānasambandar and Tirumangai Āḻvār. The earliest narrative of this incident accessible to us is that of the *Divyasūricarita*.² Sambandar, the opponent of Jainism, is said to have gone forth from Shiyali in his eagerness to meet the great Vaiṣṇava antagonist of Buddhism and to invite him to Shiyali. Tirumangai would not set foot in a city which had no temple of Viṣṇu, and Sambandar overcame the objection by disclosing the existence of an ancient image of Viṣṇu that had once stood in a temple, since ruined, and was being regularly worshipped at the time by an *arcaka* in his private dwelling. Sambandar and Tirumangai then entered Shiyali together; there Tirumangai composed some hymns which Sambandar admired greatly, and before leaving for his own city of Ālinagar, he induced some rich persons engaged in embellishing the Śiva temple to undertake the renovation of that of Viṣṇu as well and to shed their hostility to the sister creed. Impossible as history,³ this beautiful legend enshrines the belief in the common mission of Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism, entertained by the Tamil Vaiṣṇavas of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In stemming the strong current of anti-Vedic heresy, the *āḻvārs* and the *nāyanārs* had laboured together in the past, and what was more natural for their successors than to bring together the great Śaiva antagonist of Jainism and the equally great Vaiṣṇava opponent of Buddhism. Let it also be noted that the currency of such a story in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries implies that Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism had not yet developed the relentless sectarian hostility that usually characterised their relations in later times. The story of the Cōḷa persecution of Rāmānuja, however, may be said to mark the beginning of sectarian intolerance within the fold of Hinduism; and the legend of the meeting of Sambandar and Tirumangai was, perhaps, but the expression of the wistful memory of happier times.

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Under the Cōḷas of the line of Vijayālaya may be said to commence the Silver Age of South Indian Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism. Difficult as it is to propose precise dates in the present state of the evidence, we may still be certain that the sacred hymns of the *nāyanārs* and the *āḻvārs* were arranged in canonical form some time in the eleventh century.

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Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi, the author who arranged the Śaiva Canon substantially in the form in which we now find it, was most probably a contemporary of Rājarāja I and Rājēndra I. The account of his life and work given in a short Purāṇa attributed to Umāpati Śiva Ācārya of the early fourteenth century seems to conserve, in the midst of much legendary matter, a fairly correct account of the growth of the canon in the hands of Nambi himself and his successors. It has been said that the inclusion, in the canon, of Nambi’s own poems and those of other writers like Karuvūr Dēvar, manifestly later than Rājarāja’s reign, and the title Abhaya and Kulaśēkhara given by Umāpati to the Cōḷa king who was Nambi’s contemporary, imply a later date for the redaction of the canon.⁴ Even in Nambi’s time, difficulty was experienced in making the collection of hymns complete—as may be seen from the hymn on Tiruviḍaivāyil by Ñānasambandar, unknown to the canon, and preserved in an inscription,⁵ and from the legend of the destruction by white ants of the bulk of the palm leaves containing the hymns.

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The practice of reciting these hymns in temples had come into vogue long before the time of Rājarāja. At Lālguḍi and Allūr in the Trichinopoly district are found inscriptions of the reign of Parāntaka I, providing for Brahmins singing the Tiruppadiyam during the daily service in the temples.⁶ Earlier than Parāntaka’s reign, in the reign of the Pallava Vijaya-Nandi-Vikrama Varman, reciters of the Tiruppadiyam are enumerated in a list of persons employed in the service of a temple at Tiruvallam.⁷ The inference is clear that the hymns had attained the status of divine literature long before Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi collected and edited them in the standard form in which they have reached us. From the reign of Parāntaka I there is a regular series of endowments⁸ recorded in epigraphs of the Cōḷa and Toṇḍai countries for the recitation of these hymns in temples, to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The mention of a Dēvāranāyakam, Superintendent of Dēvāram, in the reign of Rājēndra I, implies that there was a regular state department controlling this work and securing its proper performance; it is not clear if the sphere of its activity was limited to Tanjore or extended to other places. In Nallūr in South Arcot, provision was made in the reign of Kulōttunga III for the singing of *Tiruccāḻal* and *Tiruvembāvai* of Māṇikka-vāśagar and for *śākkai-kūttu* on special occasions in the temple of Nalla-nāyanār; *Tiruvembāvai* was divided into *mudal*-, *iraṇḍām-pāṭṭu*, and *kaḍaikkāppu*, and the right to sing each sold to different *dēvaraḍiyār*. In another temple, Ulaganātha of Ulaganallūr (S. Arcot), the assignment of dance and song to separate dancing girls on separate days of the festival is recorded in another inscription.

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The history of Vaiṣṇava hymnology in the period was quite similar. Tradition confers upon Nāthamuni the honour of having done for Vaiṣṇava lyrics what Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi achieved for the Śaiva ones. If Śrīnātha who seems to be mentioned in the Anbil plates⁹ may be taken to be the same as the Vaiṣṇava Saint Nāthamuni, his age would be the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth centuries a.d., and this accords well with the other testimony we have, meagre as it is, on the subject. However that may be, the contents of the Anbil plates, the strong Vaiṣṇavism of the family of Aniruddha, the minister of Parāntaka II, the life of his father whose glory was his learning and the number of his disciples, the attachment of his mother and grand-father to God Ranganātha, the liberal support extended by his great grand-father Ananta to the poor and the indigent — these furnish a clear idea of the part played by Vaiṣṇavism in the social and religious life of the time. And the age of Nāthamuni's ministry cannot lie far from it, as he was the first of the great succession of Ācāryas who carried forward and completed the work started by the Āḻvārs of an earlier time.¹⁰ The story is that Nāthamuni once heard some visitors to his place from Kurugūr recite a hymn of ten verses from the *Tiruvāymoḻi*, the 1000 hymns composed by Śāṭhakōpa, also called Nammāḻvār. Captivated by the melody of the hymn and noticing from its last verse that it comprised only ten out of a thousand verses composed by Nammāḻvār, Nāthamuni undertook a journey to Kurugūr, the birth-place of Nammāḻvār, in the hope of discovering the whole collection there. At Kurugūr, after worshipping Viṣṇu, Nāthamuni resorted to the foot of the sacred tamarind tree in his desire to meet the Āḻvār; great was his grief and disappointment when he found his yogic powers unequal to the task of invoking a vision of Śaṭhakōpa. He then adopted the plan of reciting 12,000 times the hymn of Madhurakavi on Śaṭhakōpa, his *guru*; pleased by this, both Śaṭhakōpa and Madhurakavi appeared before Nāthamuni and imparted to him the knowledge of the four Prabandhas¹¹ with their full import. Thereafter Nāthamuni stayed in Kurugūr meditating upon the Prabandhas until he was summoned by Vīranārāyaṇa Kṛṣṇa, the god of his native place, to go back to Vīranārāyaṇapuram, where he collected a band of disciples round himself and made them sing these hymns to divine tunes.¹²

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It were cruel and futile to dissect such fanciful tales with the weapons of historical criticism. In its integrity, this story is typical of the Indian way of keeping fresh the memory of great men and their deeds. It justifies the inference that the Vaiṣṇava canon was arranged and its musical modes settled by the first great Ācārya of the second great division in the history of Vaiṣṇavism in South India, the one that falls between the age of the hymns and that of the great commentators that followed long after Rāmānuja.¹³ The mention of Tiru-Vāymoḻidēvar in an inscription at Ukkal in Rājarāja's reign, and of the recitation of Tiruppadiyam in Viṣṇu temples is enough to show the parallelism in practice between Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism in this respect. Two inscriptions of the reign of Rājēndra I from Uttaramērūr provide for the distribution of the food offered to the deity among Śrī-Vaiṣṇavas reciting Tiruppadiyam during worship,¹⁴ and create an endowment of land for the maintenance of three persons who were to recite *Tiruvāymoḻi* regularly in the temple.¹⁵ The recitation of *Tiruvāymoḻi* during *tiruppaḷḷi-yeḷucci* in the Śrīrangam temple is provided for in a record of a.d. 1085.¹⁶ The fact that the hymn of Kulaśēkhara-āḻvār beginning *tēṭṭarundiral* was recited before the deity during three nights in the course of a festival in Śrīrangam is mentioned in an inscription of a.d. 1088¹⁷. The recitation of *Tiruvāymoḻi* during the festivals in the months of Arpiśi (October-November) and Vaigāśi (May-June) at Tirukkōyilūr is provided for in an inscription of the eighth year of Rājādhirāja II, A.D. 1171¹⁸ A choir of fifty-eight Brahmins reciting *Tirumoḻi* in Kāñcī is mentioned in A.D. 1242.¹⁹ An inscription from Tirukkōyilūr, of uncertain date, records an endowment for the recitation of *Tiruneḍun-dāṇḍagam* in the local Viṣṇu temple.²⁰ Lastly, an inscription perhaps of Kulōttunga III, mentions the creation at Kāñcīpuram of a *bhāṣya-vṛtti* for the Rāmānuja-bhāṣya being regularly expounded by a competent person.²¹ And these instances are by no means exhaustive.

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¹⁸ 268 of 1902.

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¹⁹ 393 of 1919.

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²⁰ 265 of 1902.

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²¹ 493 of 1919.

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One curious instance of a contemporary composition of a *tiruppadiyam* beginning *Kōlanār-kuḻal* in praise of Viṣṇu at Tirumālpuram is recorded in an inscription of A.D. 995;²² such imitations of the canonical hymns seem however to have been quite rare, and unlike the later Śaiva compositions, have found no place in canonical literature.

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²² 333 of 1906.

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It may be noted that the recitation in the temples of the sacred hymns in Tamil emphasises the rank assigned to them by the side of the Sanskritic Vedas, both by the Śaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas. That the Vedas were chanted day by day in the temples at the time of worship by Brahmins specially appointed for the purpose becomes clear not only from the practice obtaining even now in the larger temples, but from a number of contemporary inscriptions of the Cōḷa period.²³ Of such records one or two may be noted as being of special interest. In the fourteenth year of a Rājakēsari,²⁴ an endowment was created in Paṇḍāravāḍai for awarding a prize once a year in a recitation contest to be held on the night of the Ārdrā festival, the competitors being required to recite a prescribed portion of *Jaiminīya Sāma Veda*. On the occasion of festivals, more men were employed to recite Vedas before the deity than on ordinary days, and such occasional services were also often endowed.²⁵ Other instances of recitations, more popular in character and intended for the instruction and edification of devotees are mentioned in the inscriptions; such are the *Śrīpurāṇa* of Āluḍaiyanambi and the *Śiva-dharma*,²⁶ and the *Sōma-siddhānta*. The nature of these works is by no means clear at present, though the last appears, from a reference to it in the *Prabōdhacandrōdaya*, to have propounded the doctrine of the Kāpālika school of Śaivism.²⁷

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²³ 194 of 1923; 250 of 1923; 99 of 1925; 182 of 1915 etc.

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²⁴ 266 of 1923.

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²⁵ 153 of 1895.

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²⁶ 214 of 1911.

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Besides the collection and conservation of sacred literature, the new life in religion manifested itself in the erection of stone temples, great and small, in all the holy places hallowed by association with the lives of the *āḻvārs* and *nāyanārs* of the earlier age. As a religious institution, the South Indian Temple reaches back to a remote antiquity, and the existence of numerous temples (*kōṭṭams*) of Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain deities is fully attested by the Śaṅgam literature. The early temples were structures of brick and mortar, or, under the Pallavas, carved out of solid blocks of granite, rock-cut 'cave temples.'²⁸ The art of erecting structural temples of stone was not unknown, and the Kailāsanātha temple at Kāñcīpuram and the shore temple at Mahābalipuram show the rapid advance in architectural achievement in the two centuries after Mahēndravarman, the Vicitra-citta who marvelled at his own feat in having brought into existence a temple without metal, timber or brick.²⁹ That stone temples were, however, still rare in the Cōḷa country in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that the kings of the Vijayālaya line led the way in multiplying their number is fully borne out by contemporary inscriptions. The Anbil plates state that the chief glory of the rule of Āditya I was that he covered the banks of the Kāvērī, along its whole course from the mountain to the sea, with a number of lofty and impregnable temples built of stone and dedicated to Śiva. The inscriptions of the reign of Parāntaka I show that Āditya's work was continued by his successor who is reputed to have covered with gold the roof of the Cidambaram temple. Besides the kings, some of their relatives and officials stand out prominent among the leaders in this widespread movement. Tirukkarṟaḷi-piccan (Piccan of the sacred stone temple) of whom there is still a sculpture in Tiruvāḍutuṟai³⁰ was one of them and he was in the service of Parāntaka I. Even the Rāṣṭrakūṭa invader, Kṛṣṇa III, erected several temples in the land newly conquered by him, one of them being the Kālapriya at Kāvēripākkam.³¹ Śembiyan-mahādēvi, the queen of Gaṇḍarāditya and mother of Uttama Cōḷa, was widowed early in life and lived on for many years thereafter. Hers was a life of religious devotion, and possibly the crime by which her son cleared his way to the throne added poignancy to her piety. In any case, she used all her great influence and resources throughout her son's reign and far into that of his successor Rājarāja I for the construction and the very liberal endowment of an unusually large number of temples.³² The village Śembiyan-mahādēvi was altogether her foundation and the stone temple dedicated to Candramauḷīśvara at Tiruvakkarai in South Arcot, built about A.D. 1001, was among the latest foundations of her life. Either as renovating old structures or founding new ones, or, more rarely, as commemorative monuments of a sepulchral character, the construction of stone temples continued throughout the Cōḷa period and, in fact, has gone on till our own times. The most conspicuous monuments of the early eleventh century, and in some ways the finest of all South Indian temples, were those of Tanjore and of Gaṅgaikoṇḍa-cōḷpuram.

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The Tanjore inscriptions of the reign of Rājarāja furnish an unusually full view of the state of Śaivism at the time. The hagiology that, more than a century later, found its classic poet in Śēkkiḻār, was already quite popular; and some of it found representation in the iconography of the time, though with some differences in detail from the later version.³³ And South Indian Śaivism appears to have had a live contact with Śaivism in the rest of India, as may be seen from Rājēndra I providing for the annual supply of a large quantity of grain as *ācāryabhōga* to Uḍaiyār Śarva Śiva Paṇḍita, who was performing the worship in the Tanjore temple, and his pupils, and their pupils, whether they lived in the Āryadēśa, Madhyadēśa or Gauḍadēśa.³⁴ Inscriptions of the reign of Kulōttunga III give evidence of the existence of this connection between Northern India and the South in late Cōḷa times as well. A certain Ōmkāradēva Irāvaḷar gave some money in 1214 as provision for *tiruppavitram* to the deity at Tiruppāśur (Chingleput district); the donor is described as a disciple of Jñānaśiva Irāvaḷar of the Santāna of Lakṣādhyāya Irāvaḷar of the Kollā-maṭha at Vārāṇasi (Benares).³⁵ Another Irāvaḷan of the Bhikṣāmaṭha of Vārāṇasi is mentioned in an inscription at Pāṇḍanallūr (Tanjore district) dated three years later.³⁶ A tradition is preserved in some stray verses quoted by Anantaśambhu (in his gloss on the *Siddhāntasārāvaḷi* of Trilōcanaśiva),³⁷ that Rājēndra I imported Śaivas from the banks of the Ganges and established them in various places in the Cōḷa country; this tradition also points to the same fact that there was a live contact between Śaiva institutions in the different parts of India.

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Speaking generally, the religious temper of the period, particularly in the first half of it, was by no means narrow or sectarian. Not only did the kings as a rule tolerate religions and sects other than their own, but they often patronised all persuasions in equal measure. A progressive king like Rājarāja even made it a point to give clear expression to his general attitude to religion by including in the decoration of the Great Śiva Temple of Tanjore themes from Vaiṣṇavism and even Buddhism. His sister Kundavai built three temples, one to Viṣṇu, another to Śiva and a third to Jina, all in the same place, Rājarājapuram, now called Dādāpuram, and her gifts to all these shrines are found recorded in the same inscription.³⁸ The list of jewels includes several *nāmams*, the Vaiṣṇava caste-mark, made of gold. There were several temples which contained shrines both of Śiva and of Viṣṇu side by side, the most conspicuous instance being that of Cidambaram. The position of the icons of Naṭarāja and Govindarāja in this temple is brought out with great precision in the verse in the *Tirukkōvaiyār* which depicts Viṣṇu as lying in front of Naṭarāja, absorbed in the contemplation of the foot lifted in his dance and supplicating him for a view of the other foot as well.³⁹ In the precincts of the temple of Candramaulīśvara, at Tiruvakkarai, which was rebuilt of stone by Śembiyan-mahādēvi, was a shrine of Varadarāja-perumāl, originally built of bricks by Kōccōḷa and reconstructed in stone in the short reign of Adhirājēndra.⁴⁰ If this is a reference to Śeṅgaṇān, the legendary Cōḷa king whom Tirumaṅgai calls by that name,⁴¹ nothing can be more significant than this epigraphical reference to his construction of a Viṣṇu temple by the side of Tirumaṅgai celebrating him for the foundation of seventy beautiful palaces to the eight-armed Īśa. Hinduism was still an attitude to life as a whole, which had not lost itself in an arid desert of sectarian rivalries.

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It should hardly cause any surprise that there were occasions in which intolerance of a rival sect got the upper hand. For even when the various creeds lived in mutual good-will and enjoyed equal patronage from the princes and nobles of the land, each sect lived its own separate and exclusive life, and nothing in the history of Indian society is more remarkable than its fatal capacity to combine intellectual tolerance with social exclusiveness. But social exclusiveness is bound, some time or other, to produce its natural result of indifference to the welfare of other groups than one's own, and when doctrinal differences become acute, this indifference very soon develops into active hostility. The leading instance of religious intolerance in the period of Cōḷa rule is that of the persecution of Rāmānuja and his followers by a Cōḷa monarch whose identity is not altogether free from doubt. We have seen reason to believe that this persecution led to a popular revolt in which Adhirājēndra, the last ruler in the male line descending from Vijayālaya, lost his life. If this is a correct view of the course of events, two inferences may be drawn. First, that far from being part of a definite policy of the Cōḷa monarchy to root out Vaiṣṇavism, the persecution of Rāmānuja was only the freak of an individual ruler. Secondly, that the general atmosphere was so unfavourable to a narrow religious policy, that the monarch who attempted it lost his life in a popular revolt and has ever since been universally abhorred as the *kṛmi kaṇṭha* (the putrid neck). No persecution has ever failed to turn out ultimately to the profit of the persecuted faith, and there is no doubt that the creed of Rāmānuja, already well established in the land by the ministrations of a long line of *āḻvārs* and *ācāryas*, drew fresh strength from the foolish and short-lived attempt to crush it out of existence. The fact remains, however, that from this period, the Śaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas of South India became strangers to that friendly feeling which subsisted between them in an earlier age when they waged a common war against the Bauddhas and the Jainas.

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Another spasmodic outburst of anti-Vaiṣṇava feeling is much better attested than the persecution of Rāmānuja, which is so overgrown with legend that the real course of events seems to be lost beyond recovery. We refer to the deeds of Kulōttunga II in Cidambaram which are, as we have seen, clearly attested by contemporary inscriptions and literature. That Kulōttunga II was a fanatic Śaiva who wanted to upset the time-honoured disposition of the images of Śiva and Viṣṇu in the great temple of the holiest centre of South Indian Śaivism cannot be gainsaid. The balance of the two faiths, thus rudely upset by Kulōttunga, was redressed in later days by the Vijayanagar rulers, but once again, the old harmony has gone, and the attitude of the two groups of devotees that have to jostle in the premises of the temple is hardly as friendly as the relative positions of the deities they worship would seem to require.

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A measure of the increasing social exclusiveness of the different sects is found in a casual decision, dated A.D. 1160, of the Mahāsabhā of Tirukkaḍaiyūr.⁴² The *sabhā* resolved that any *māhēśvaras* who, contrary to their tenets as custodians of the Śiva temple and its observances, mixed freely with Vaiṣṇavas, would forfeit their property to the temple. This is almost the only recorded instance of this kind; even so, its significance is unmistakable. It is, no doubt, typical of the new religious atmosphere of steady deterioration that was setting in.

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⁴² 256 of 1925.

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The unique position of Kāñcīpuram, one of the capital cities of the Cōḷa empire, is very instructive in regard to the mutual relations of the rival religious systems which were competing for royal patronage and popular favour. This city is seen to have comprised three principal sections, each consecrated to a particular faith and the institutions ministering to it. The biggest of them all is devoted to Śiva, then comes what is often called Little Kāñcīpuram sacred to Viṣṇu in the form of Hasti-giri-āḷvār or Aruḷāḷa Perumāl, and lastly we have Jina-kāñcī, popularly known as Tirupparuttikkuṉṟu, undoubtedly larger and more prosperous and in more direct and frequent communication with Kāñcīpuram proper in the days of the Cōḷa empire than at the present day. Let us also recall that many vestiges of what must once have been a considerable Buddhist colony have been found at Kāñcīpuram. We see in the plan of the different parts of this great and ancient city and their mutual relations much that is suggestive of the history of religious beliefs and practices at their best in South India.

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The impression of the tolerance and eclecticism that generally characterised the religious outlook of the time is strengthened by a study of the pantheon which included an assortment of all conceivable deities to whom worship was offered throughout the country. Besides images of Śiva in his various aspects⁴³ like Kirātārjunīya, Bhikṣātana, Kalyāṇasundara, Pañcadēha, Lingapurāṇadēva, Umāsahita, Naṭarāja, Dakṣiṇāmūrti, Śrī Kaṇṭha and so on, the icons presented to the great temple of Tanjore by its royal patrons included images of Gaṇapati, Subrahmaṇya, Mahā Viṣṇu and Sūrya.⁴⁴ There were also images of Śaiva saints receiving regular worship among them like Caṇḍēśvara, the three authors of the *Dēvāram*, Meypporuḷ-nāyanār, Śiṟuttoṇḍar, Śīrāḷar⁴⁵ and others. Among goddesses are mentioned Kāla-piḍāri, Durgā-Paramēśvari and Ēmaḷattu Durgaiyār Ōṅkārasundari.⁴⁶ The Tanjore inscriptions mention incidentally other minor deities worshipped in several outlying villages; these village deities comprised many forms of Piḍāri, Śēṭṭaiyār (Jyēṣṭhā)⁴⁷ and others, whose shrines are called *tirumuṟṟam* as distinguished from the *Śrī Kōyil* of the higher pantheon. The seven Mothers⁴⁸ are mentioned in other inscriptions, as also Kṛṣṇa,⁴⁹ Rāma, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa,⁵⁰ and Hanumān.⁵¹ Tiruvoṟṟiyūr offered worship to all the sixty-three Śaiva saints,⁵² and Kāḷahasti kept the memory of a local legend fresh in the name of a garden called after Kaṇṇappar.⁵³ Eṇṇāyiram, a strong centre of Vaiṣṇavism, allotted shares from the lands of the village to the shrines of Śrī-Mūlasthānam-uḍaiyār, Sarasvati, Śrībhaṭāraki, Mahāmōḍi, Sūryadēva, Saptamātargaḷ, Mahāśāstā, Durgā, Jyēṣṭhā and the gods of the *Śēris*.⁵⁴ To complete the picture of practical popular religion it may be added that pilgrimages to specially sacred places were known and the charity of some took the form of providing amenities for the pilgrims *en route* to and from Tirumalai (Tirupati).⁵⁵ The regular sacrifice of a goat on every Tuesday to Muṇḍēśvari by the Kurava women of the *nāḍu* is recorded in a Mysore inscription of the time of Rājēndra I.⁵⁶

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There is thus not a single element of popular Hinduism as we know it now that is not represented in the religious practice of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Foreign students of the religious history of India have often been puzzled and sometimes irritated by the utter recklessness with which Hinduism appears to sanction and absorb within itself the basest superstitions and devil worship as well as the noblest and purest forms of worship and meditation.⁵⁷ But in religion, as in other matters, the aim was to attain, not equality, but harmony; to evolve a system in which each person and class would find a proper place, a foothold from which the next step might be taken. The doctrines of *karma* and rebirth were parts of the living faith of the whole people, and the inclusion, within the common fold, of the more primitive manifestations of the religious impulse was but the result of a metaphysic which saw in the lowliest human being, in fact, in any living creature, a spark of divinity enveloped in the accidents of its own past and working out its way back to its pristine purity. The honoured place held by many *nāyanārs* and *āḻvārs* who were not of the priestly class by birth, and the story of the pariah saint Nandan show that the standard of spiritual values was by no means lowered by the admission of primitive faiths into the ante-chamber of Hinduism. The aim was ever to purify and sublimate the religious impulse, though it is probable that, in the attempt to raise the lower forms, the higher ones did not themselves altogether escape damage.

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The life of the ascetic strongly appealed to the imagination of the people, and one of the common forms of religious charity was to provide for the feeding, regular or occasional, of ascetics in temples and *maṭhas*. Vaiṣṇavism was on the whole moderate in its devotion to the ascetic ideal, and did not give rise to the bizarre manifestations of it associated with Śaivism. The Vaiṣṇava endowments generally provided for the feeding of Śrī-Vaiṣṇavas and *tādar* (*dāsas*),⁵⁸ or of Brahmins who had a perfect mastery of the Veda.⁵⁹ And the degenerate Vaiṣṇavism of the Rādhā cult was as yet unknown and had apparently no great vogue in the South at any time. Examples of Vaiṣṇava *maṭhas* like the Kundavai *maṭha* at Uttaramērūr⁶⁰ can be gathered from inscriptions. Śaivism was at this period in marked contrast with the Advaitism of Śaṅkara, Smārta Hinduism as it may be called, and embraced a whole gamut of sectional groups ranging from the comparatively mild Śivayōgins to the extremely fanatical and repulsive groups like the Pāśupatas, the Kāpālikas, and the Kālāmukhas. The Śivayōgin, as his name implies, spent his life meditating upon Śiva and seeking release from the bonds of mundane life by such meditation; at the approach of death, he is said to bathe his body in ashes, utter certain Śaiva mantras and worship the linga on his chest. Many are the inscriptions recording endowments for Śivayōgins being fed in temples and *maṭhas*.⁶¹ The Kālāmukhas, also called Mahāvratins, were perhaps the most extreme sect among these, and do not seem to have been very different from the Kāpālikas., 'The Kālāmukhas hold that the following are the means for the attainment of desires concerning this world and the next:— (1) eating food in skull; (2) besmearing the body with the ashes of a dead body; (3) eating the ashes; (4) holding a club; (5) keeping a pot of wine; (6) worshipping the god as seated therein.'⁶² From these practices, they were known as Mahāvratins, 'men with the great vows'; they roused the disgust of a humane reformer like Rāmānuja. They appear even to have practised human sacrifices.⁶³ The Kālāmukhas were widespread in South India in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. They did not lack support from the princes and the people. The Koḍumbāḷūr chieftain Vikramakēsari, the contemporary of Parāntaka II, constructed the three temples (*vimāna-trayam*) known as Mūvarkōvil, and then he presented a big *maṭha* (*bṛhan-maṭham*) to the glorious Mallikārjuna of the Ātrēya *gōtra*, a man from Madhurā, versed in the Veda and the *śiṣya* of Vidyārāśi and Tapōrāśi; to that chief ascetic of the Kālāmukhādāna, his *guru*, the Yādava (Vikramakēsari) also gave eleven *grāmas* attached to the *maṭha* for the regular feeding of fifty *Asita-vaktra* ascetics.⁶⁴ Earlier than the date of this record from Pudukkottah, is one from Vēḍāḷ (North Arcot) which mentions the Kālāmukha Daśapuriyan of the Hārīta *gōtra* and the Āpastamba *sūtra*.⁶⁵ At Mēlpāḍi, in the same part of the country, there was a *maṭha* of the Kālāmukhas of which the head was called Lakulīśvara-Paṇḍita.⁶⁶ There was another at Tiruvorṟiyūr presided over by Caturānana Paṇḍita.⁶⁷ In the reign of Vīrarājēndra, an inscription from Jambai (South Arcot) mentions a Mahāvratin Lakulīśvara Paṇḍita among the authorities of the local temple. A Kālāmukha Gōmaḍattu Aruḷāḷa Bhaṭṭan sold some land to the temple at Kōyil Tēvarāyanpēṭṭai (Tanjore district) in A.D.

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1123.⁶⁸ Other Kālāmukhas of the same spiritual lineage, bearing the names Śailarāśi and Jñānarāśi, are mentioned as endowing lamps or taking charge of such endowments in the temple of Tiruvānaikkōyil (Chingleput) in the years 1127, 1205 and 1231.⁶⁹ All these instances point to the extent and continuity of the influence of the Kālāmukhas on South Indian Śaivism under the Cōḷas. It may be doubted, however, if the members of the sects who were connected with the temples and perhaps conducted worship in them, actively practised the tenets attributed to them. In the absence of contemporary literary evidence on such questions, we lack the means of determining this satisfactorily.

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The career of one of the Caturānana Paṇḍitas⁷⁰ of the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr *maṭha* is rather fully described in an inscription of the time of Kannaradēva, and deserves to be noticed in some detail as affording an interesting and authentic instance of the kind of motives that sent people into a life of ascetic renunciation. Born of a family of local chieftains in Kērala, Valabha who resembled Guha and was possessed of many great qualities, mastered all the arts and sciences in his boyhood and, in the prime of life, bent on service to the world, he reached the Cōḷa country and came to be closely associated with king Rājāditya as his *sāmanta* and affectionate friend.⁷¹ As, owing to other pre-occupations he did not have the pleasure of fighting and dying along with his friend on the battle-field, he smarted that his life was not in keeping with his birth and connections, and became indifferent to the things of the world. Then he bathed in the Ganges, and turned ascetic at Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, obtaining his *vratas* from Nirañjana guru and becoming a Mahāvratin, Caturānana by name, and head of the local *maṭha*. The inscription which gives this account is dated in the twentieth year of 'Kannaradēva who took Kacci and Tañjai' about a.d. 960, when he had made himself master of the northern districts of the Cōḷa kingdom as a result of his invasion.

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The ascetics owned no property themselves; but their organisations, the monasteries (*maṭhas*), often owned vast estates devoted to their maintenance and the encouragement of learning and the arts. What proportion of the population led such a life of pious, if not uneasy, poverty, and whether it was a larger one than at present, it is of course difficult to determine. The times were quite favourable to the ascetic ideal, and all religious systems in the country applauded it. Asceticism was twice blessed; he who turned ascetic and he who did not do so, but remained householder, alike gained by it. Both accumulated religious merit, for the householder was assured of a good berth in the other world as much for his gifts (*dāna*), as the ascetic for his renunciation and austerity. There was no doubt many a pious fraud masquerading under the garb of asceticism that often afforded the occasion for a good joke among the populace whose common sense was seldom slow in detecting such cases. But the modern attitude which, in the name of economics, counts each man a hand, and looks upon a mendicant as an idle hand, was altogether unknown. And in spite of its excesses and aberrations, the ascetic ideal has done great good to the people by stressing the higher values of the spirit, and by giving them a ready-made philosophy with which to face the hard realities of life. It is still cherished by the masses of the people, in the villages, though not so much in the cities.

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The history of the *maṭhas* and *guhais*⁷² of the period cannot be pursued in any detail here. Their origin is anterior to the reign of Rājarāja I⁷³ and their number and influence steadily increased during the period of Cōḻa rule in South India. Starting from important centres where one or more *maṭhas* were established in the first instance, the movement spread all over the land until almost every temple came to possess one or more *maṭhas* functioning in close proximity to it. They grouped themselves from the beginning round a few prominent centres and in course of time, a limited number of *santānas*, spiritual groups attached to particular successions of *gurus*, came to be distinguished; examples of such *santānas* are the *lakṣādhyāya santāna* of the *maṭha* of Patañjali-dēvar situated at Melaiccēri of Perumbarṟappuliyūr (Cidambaram) which controlled an *ācāryasthāna* at Kīḻaikāṭṭu (Kīḻaiyūr, Negapatam tq., Tanjore dt.), besides the Kollāmaṭha at Vārāṇasī and Naḍuvil-maṭha at Tiruvānaikkāval; that of the *mudaliyārs* of Tiruccattimurṟam⁷⁴ and the *māḷigai-maḍattu mudaliyār santānam* of Tiruvidaimarudil.⁷⁵ Many of these groups were confined to the Tamil country in the range of their activity; these were the Tamil Śaiva *maṭhas* proper. Others, however, kept up wider contacts and prided themselves on their connection with Āryadēśam, Benares, or even Kashmir; the Gōḷakī *maṭha* had also a considerable following in the South. Epigraphy and tradition alike point to a fairly large immigration of Bhaṭṭas from Northern India to important religious centres in the South, particularly to Śrīrangam; immigrants from Kāśmīradeśam are specially mentioned in Śrīrangam besides other places in Chingleput and Ramnad districts. Generally, the *maṭhas* which maintained these external contacts belonged to the various schools of Pāśupatas, Kāpālikas and so on. There must have been monastic institutions of other types maintained by Śaiva Brahmins and Vaiṣṇavas, though of these we learn relatively little from the inscriptions.

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One instance of a *maṭha* in which provision was made for the convenience of pilgrims deserves special mention. A record from Gōvindaputtūr dated a.d. 1248,⁷⁶ mentions that Subrahmaṇya Śiva of Cidambaram (Vyāghrapurī), a grandson of a certain well known Kandhābharaṇa, purchased land from several persons and created an endowment for certain specific services to be undertaken by the Tiruttoṇḍattogaiyān-tiru-maḍam situated in the temple of Tiruviśaiyamangai at Gōvindaputtūr. Among the services to be undertaken with the proceeds of the land were the supply of salt and castor oil to pilgrims, and medical help for those among the disciples who fell ill and had no one to look after them. It is also of interest to note that Subrahmaṇya Śiva, evidently also the head of the *maṭha*, laid it down that his successors duly appointed by him for the administration of the *maṭha* at the end of his life were to carry on this arrangement, and in case he died without choosing his successor, he was to be chosen by the head of another *maṭha* at Cidambaram (also called Tiruttoṇḍattogaiyān-tirumaḍam) and that the new head so chosen was to carry on the arrangements under that particular endowment. It is possible that similar provisions for general amenities, besides feeding and teaching, commonly undertaken by these institutions, obtained elsewhere; but we have no definite knowledge of them. It has been pointed out that sometimes even animals were attended to in similar institutions, and an instance from the Travancore country has been cited.⁷⁷

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Before leaving the *maṭhas*, attention must be drawn to a popular riot described in a record of the second year of Rājarāja III⁷⁸ as *guhai-iḍi-kalaham*, a revolt in which monasteries were demolished. This occurred in the twenty-second regnal year of Kulōttunga III, a.d. 1200, and in it, the property belonging to a *guhai* in Tirutturaipūṇḍi suffered badly. The causes of this demonstration are not stated and we cannot even say whether it was directed against this particular *guhai* or *guhais* in general; on the latter assumption, it is indeed very strange that we hear nothing more of it than this casual reference to it.⁷⁹

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In the long period of Cōḷa rule the Hindu temple attained the zenith of its influence on the social life of the country. It ceased to be a small structure of brick and mortar providing a centre of simple worship attended by the villagers. The new idea of the stone temple found room for the employment of much skill and taste in its planning and decoration. With its rise, there came up also a varied and complex routine in each temple sustained by the rich accumulations in land and gold, the result of pious gifts, offered with a generosity and administered with a care to which we have long become strangers. Each generation husbanded with caution what was handed down to it, and by means of fresh additions, managed to leave a richer heritage to its successor. The vast and growing wealth of the temples brought them into more and more intimate business relations with the neighbourhood. And in Tanjore, there rose under Rājarāja's eye, as under a magician's wand, the marvellous Great Temple which surpassed everything effected elsewhere by generations of effort. Not only did its stately plan ensure for it an abiding place as the masterpiece of South Indian Temple architecture, but the elaborate arrangements made for the management of the affairs of the temple and carefully recorded in the inscriptions on its walls, summed up the best practices of the time in this regard and set a model for the future. A deliberate desire to bring the temple into intimate touch with several aspects of the life of the people marks almost every one of these arrangements. As the Great Temple adorned the capital city of the whole empire, and as it was the foundation of the greatest monarch of Southern India, the range of its contacts was naturally much wider than that of an average temple; but almost every temple, however small in size and restricted in influence, was a miniature of the Great Temple and had its counterpart of every feature of the larger institution.

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The Great Temple of Tanjore was easily the richest temple of the time. The king alone had by the twenty-ninth year of his reign presented to it a vast amount of gold and treasure in the form of ornaments, jewels and vessels. Much of it was booty that fell to him as a result of his wars. The quantity of gold of which account has been preserved amounted to over 41,500 *kalañjus*, or, taking a *kalañju* to be about 70 grains, well over 500 lbs. troy. The value of jewels presented was about 10,200 *kāśus*, equal to half as many *kalañjus*, in gold.⁸⁰ Of silver he gave 50,650 *kalañjus*, over 600 lbs. troy. He set apart lands in several villages throughout his dominions, including Ceylon, yielding an annual income of 116,000 *kalams* of paddy, equal at the then prevailing prices⁸¹ to 58,000 *kāśus*, besides a cash income of 1,100 *kāśus*. For the service of the temple, four hundred hetaerae were impressed from among those of the other temples in the country, and they were assigned each a *pangu* (share) comprising a house and one *vēli* of land yielding a net revenue of 100 *kalams* of paddy a year. About 180 such shares were set apart further for the maintenance of as many as 212 men servants comprising dancing masters, musicians, drummers, tailors, goldsmiths, accountants and so on. Among these were three persons to sing the *Āriyam* and four others the *Tamiḻ*, apparently the two systems of music called *ahamārgam* and *dēśi* elsewhere.⁸² There was constituted also a choir of fifty persons for reciting the *Tiruppadiyam* to the accompaniment of musical instruments; the choir had the power to fill vacancies by co-optation in case any of them died or migrated elsewhere leaving behind no relative suitable to take his place; the daily remuneration for each of them was fixed at three *kuruṇis* of paddy-corn.⁸³ Rājarāja’s elder sister Kundavai presented to the temple gold of the weight of nearly 10,000 *kalañjus* and utensils of the value of 18,000 *kāśus*. Others, queens and high officials and regiments of soldiers, made other gifts recorded with equal care and precision on the temple walls and pillars. All the cash endowments amounting to several thousands of *kāśus* were loaned out to numerous village assemblies at rates of interest fixed in kind or money, and generally ranging about 12% per annum. Camphor, cardamom-seeds, campak-buds and cuscus-roots, for instance, were provided for in this manner by means of cash endowments.

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In fact, the place of the Great Temple in the economy of the capital city and of the empire can hardly be exaggerated. Its construction must have extended By the side of Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism and the other forms taken by Hinduism to which attention has been drawn, Jainism had a fair following and enjoyed the patronage of the princes and people, though not to the same extent as the orthodox creeds. The *paḷḷic-candam*, the land of the *paḷḷi* (Jaina temple), was a recognised category of tax-free land known to the revenue accounts of the time. Tamil literature was greatly enriched by the writings of Jain authors, and legend avers that as late as the middle of the twelfth century Śēkkiḻār was goaded into the composition of his magnificent ‘Lives of the Saints’ (*Periya-purāṇam*) by king Kulōttunga II seeking literary enjoyment in the verses of the *Śīvaka-Śindāmaṇi*, a secular *kāvya* in Tamil by a Jain author. Vestiges of Jainism have been discovered in the Travancore country which, though undated, may with some confidence be assigned to the period extending from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries.⁸⁵ And the Cōḷa inscriptions contain noteworthy references to Jain centres in the Tamil districts. The Udayēndiram plates of Hastimalla record that the Digambara Jains had an ancient *paḷḷic-candam* comprising two *paṭṭis* of land which were specially excluded from the gift of the village of Kaḍaikkōṭṭūr made in the reign of Parāntaka I.⁸⁶ There was at Vēḍāl (N. Arcot) a large Jain monastery in which some dispute arose between one nun and her five hundred pupils on the one part and four hundred nuns on the other, and was put an end to only by the lay Jains of the place taking under their protection one of the parties to the dispute.⁸⁷ This was about A.D. 885. At Śīṟṟāmūr in South Arcot an inscription of the seventeenth year of a Rājakesari records the provision of a lamp in the *maṇḍapa* of the temple of Pārśvanātha in which the scripture was expounded.⁸⁸ A certain Gangāśūrapperumbaḷḷi of Rājēndrapuram finds mention in a record from Tirakkōl (N. Arcot);⁸⁹ and a Kanakasēnabhaṭāra who had the *paḷḷi* is found at Śendalai in the twelfth year of a Parakēsari.⁹⁰ At Ānandamangalam in the Chingleput district, on a boulder which bears in a line the sculptures of three groups of Jaina figures, is found engraved a record which provides for the daily feeding of one *aḍigaḷ* in the Jinagirip-paḷḷi.⁹¹ This record is dated A.D. 945 in the reign of Parāntaka I. In the same year, a pupil of Ariṣṭanēmibhaṭāra, of the big Jain settlement of Tiruppāṉmalai, Pattinik-kuratti-aḍigal by name, caused a well to be dug at Viḻāppākkam, and the well and a house were constituted into a nunnery, under the supervision of 'the twenty-four' of the place.⁹² In the seventeenth year of Rājarāja, two lamps were endowed by a land grant to the big monastery (*periya-paḷḷi*) in Tirunaṟungoṇḍai, a *paḷḷic-candam* in South Arcot.⁹³ Tirumalai near Pōḷūr in North Arcot, and Tirumalavāḍi in the Trichinopoly district where Kundavai built a Jain temple were other great Jain centres of the time.⁹⁴ At Tirupparuttikkuṉṟam, a suburb of Kāñcīpuram, there is a celebrated Jain shrine to this day. This place is often called Jina Kāñcī, and its *Ṛṣisamudāya*, congregation of monks, is said to have purchased some land about A.D. 1116,⁹⁵ and the same *samudāya* is just mentioned in another inscription of a slightly later date in the reign of Vikramacōḷa.⁹⁶ An undated inscription of the reign of Kulōttunga I records a gift of land to a *perumbaḷḷi* (big Jain temple), called after the king's name, at Kuhūr, in the Tanjore district.⁹⁷ Two other *paḷḷis* are mentioned in an inscription of A.D. 1194 from Maruttuvakkuḍi, Tanjore district.⁹⁸ The settlement at Jina-Kāñcī is once more mentioned in A.D. 1199, when Kurukkaḷ Candrakīrtti and some others are said to have exerted themselves to secure the grant of a *paḷḷic-canda iraiyili* for this important shrine.

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Facts like these raise a warning against a wholesale acceptance of the stories of the persecution and extirpation of Jainism and Buddhism, so freely retailed in the hagiology of the Hindu sects.

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Buddhism does not seem to figure as much in the epigraphy of the period as Jainism. The celebrated Leyden grant indeed records the gift of a whole village to the Bauddha *Vihāra* of Cūḍāmaṇi-Varmadēva in Negapatam, and this grant was supplemented by a fresh gift in the reign of Kulōttunga I, on a representation made by the king of Kaḍāram through his ambassadors. And the Vaiṣṇava legends have preserved a curious story of Tirumaṅgai Āḻvār having despoiled the Bauddha *Vihāra* of Negapatam of a solid golden image of the Buddha in order to find the funds required for building the great Ranganātha temple at Śrīraṅgam; possibly this legend only means that at the time the lives of the Āḻvārs were put together, in the twelfth century a.d., Negapatam was still a strong centre of Buddhism which attracted popular attention by its wealth and influence. Some relics of Buddhism have been traced in Kāñcīpuram⁹⁹ and it is quite possible that Kāñcīpuram which was one of the great centres of Hinduism and Jainism also accommodated a Buddhist colony in these days. Śrī Mūlavāsam in Malabar, on almost the same latitude as Negapatam on the opposite coast, was another well known centre of Buddhism whose influence was felt from very early times in places as far from it as Gandhāra.¹⁰⁰ A more systematic search for Buddhist antiquities in Southern India than has yet been undertaken may reveal other centres of that religion not now known to us. Buddhist writers also contributed to the growth of Tamil Literature, though not to the same extent as Jains. All the same, epigraphy and literature alike produce the impression that in the tenth and eleventh centuries of the Christian era, Buddhism was less popular in the Tamil country than Jainism, and it seems probable that in the religious controversies of the preceding age, Buddhism suffered more damage and lost its hold on the people of the country more completely than Jainism.

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