The Colas c33.23

c33.23

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.