The Colas c33.3

c33.3

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.