The Colas c33.4

c33.4

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.