The Colas c33.24

c33.24

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.