The Colas c34.37

c34.37

It is curious that few works of religious literature seem to have been composed by the Vaiṣṇavas of the Tamil country in this period. It has been pointed out already that the arrangement of the Vaiṣṇava canon proceeded side by side with that of the Śaiva canon in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. There is also ample evidence to show that a succession of great Vaiṣṇava *ācāryas* composed numerous devotional poems and philosophical works in the Sanskrit language in this period; Yāmunācārya, Yādavaprakāśa and Rāmānuja himself are only the leading examples of a large group of authors justly celebrated for their learning and devotion and for their literary achievements. Strangely enough, however, Vaiṣṇavism which started as a popular movement of religious reform and revival, appears to have developed in the Cōḷa period a sort of a high-brow attitude and scorned the use of the popular idiom; in fact, the writers of this school developed in course of time a quaint style more Sanskritic than Tamil in its make-up which is seen at its best in the great commentaries of Periya-vāccān Piḷḷai and Nambiḷḷai. Among the works composed in this style of writing, one of the earliest is the short commentary, the *Ārāyirappaḍi*, on Nammāḻvār's *Tiruvāymoḻi*, by Kurugaippirān Piḷḷān, a relative and disciple of Rāmānuja.