The Colas c33.31

c33.31

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.