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A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20: Chapter XV. Religion and Philosophy

A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20

Language
English

Contents

Chapter XV. Religion and Philosophy

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Introductory—early harmony among sects—reaction against Jainism and Buddhism—bhakti schools—nāyaṇārs—āḷvārs—Kumārila and Śaṅkara—temples and bhakti—schools in the age of the Cholas—Rāmānuja—Nimbārka—Madhva—Vaiṣṇava schism—saints of Mahārāṣṭra—Vallabhācārya—Pāśupata sects—temples of the Deccan—growth of Śaiva-siddhānta—Vīra-śaivism and the Ārādhyas—temples and festivals under Vijayanagar.

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Buddhism, Jainism and Ājīvikas—Islām—Christianity.

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IN the sphere of religion, as generally in all matters of spiritual culture, South India began by being heavily indebted to the North; but in the course of centuries it more than amply repaid the debt and made signal contributions to the theory and practice of religion and to philosophic thought in its various aspects. Its saints and seers evolved a new type of bhakti, a fervid emotional surrender to God which found its supreme literary expression in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, a bhakti very different from the calm, dignified devotion of the Bhāgavatas of the early centuries before and after Christ in Northern India. Again, from South India arose the two schools of Vedic exegesis—Mīmāṃsā—that go by the names of Kumārila-bhaṭṭa and Prabhākara. The founders of the three main systems of Vedānta—Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva—also hailed from the southern country. Yet another prominent philosophical system—the Śaiva-siddhānta—also found its exponents in the Tamil country. Lastly, the Vedas were commented on more than once in this part of the country, and the constant study of the ritual manuals of the different Vedic schools was kept up. The literature of these movements was reviewed in outline in the last chapter; here we shall seek to sketch the main stages in the history of these developments.

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Till about the fifth century A.D., harmony and tolerance characterized the relations between the different religious sects. The worship of primitive godlings with offerings of blood and toddy went on side by side with the performance of elaborate Vedic sacrifices; the popular pantheon included many deities like Muruga, Śiva, Vishnu, Indra, Krishna, and others. Buddhists and Jains were found in considerable numbers in different parts of the country following their practices without let or hindrance. In the story of Maṇimēkalai, for instance, we find the heroine advised to study in Kāñchī the philosophical systems of the Veda, Śiva, Viṣṇu, Ājīvika, Jaina and of the Sāṅkhya, Vaiśeṣika and Lokāyata.

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But soon a great change came—particularly in the Tamil country—and people began to entertain fears of the whole land going over to Jainism and Buddhism. At any rate, worshippers of Śiva and Viṣṇu felt the call to stem the rising tide of heresy. The growth, on the one hand, of an intense emotional bhakti to Śiva or Viṣṇu and, on the other, of an outspoken hatred of Buddhists and Jains, are the chief characteristics of the new epoch. Challenges to public debate, competition in the performance of miracles, tests of the truth of doctrines by means of ordeal, became the order of the day. Parties of devotees under the leadership of one gifted saint or another traversed the country many times over, singing, dancing and debating all their way. This great wave of religious enthusiasm attained its peak in the early seventh century and had not spent itself in the middle of the ninth.

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Later tradition counted sixty-three nāyanārs, individual and collective, as the most prominent leaders of this revival on the side of the Śaivas. The individuals included a woman from Kāraikāl, and a pariah, Nandan from Ādanūr, besides a general of the Pallava forces, Śiruṭṭoṇḍar. But most prominent among them were the three great men whose hymns are collected together in the Dēvāram. First came Tirunāvukkaraśu, a Veḷḷāla from Tiruvāmūr and most probably contemporary of the Pallava ruler Mahendravarman I. Though born in an orthodox Śaiva family he was attracted to Jainism in his early years, and joined the Jaina monastery at Pāṭaliputra (Cuddalore) as a monk. His elder sister, who had watched his change of faith with untold regret, implored Śiva's help. Her prayer was answered: Dharmasena, for that was her brother's name in the monastery, became the victim of an incurable abdominal disorder. When all his fellow-Jains failed him, he was compelled to go and seek his sister's aid. She secured his cure by the grace of the God of Tiruvadigai. The news of his defection greatly upset the Jaina monks of Pāṭaliputra who trumped up many false charges against Dharmasena to poison the mind of Mahendravarman against him. He was subjected to many trials and tortures which, however, by the grace of Śiva he easily surmounted. Finally, the king himself was convinced of the superiority of Śaivism, and embraced it. Whatever element of truth there may be in the life-story of Tirunāvukkarasu or Appar which we have sketched above, a verse in the Trichinopoly inscription of Mahendravarman furnishes clear proof that the king did indeed turn to Śaivism from some other creed. It must, however, be admitted that the tradition regarding the persecution of Appar by Mahendravarman (whose name does not occur in the story narrated by Śekkilār) is hard to reconcile with the spirit of the *Mattavilāsa*. The rest of Appar's long life of 81 years was spent in pilgrimages during which he met many contemporary nāyanārs, of whom Ñānasambandar was the most notable, indeed the greatest of them all.

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Ñānasambandar was a Brahmin of the Kaundinya *gōtra* from Shiyāli in the Tanjore district. There are few Śaiva temples in the Tamil country today where worship is not offered to him. Legend avers that as a child of three he got the milk of divine knowledge from Pārvati herself and narrated the incident to his father in song. The father at once realized the divinity of his child and carried him on his shoulders from one Śaiva shrine to another until he was relieved by the present from the gods of a pearl palanquin for his son's use. At that time the Pāndya country was almost completely overrun by Jainism, and the Pāndyan queen, a princess from the Chola country, and the minister Kulaccirai, both of whom were Śaivas, sent Sambandar an urgent invitation to come and release the Pāndya and his country from the tightening grip of Jainism. Ñānasambandar betook himself to Madura, foiled all the conspiracies of the Jains against him, vanquished them in debate and converted the king and his subjects to Śaivism. The story goes that on this occasion 8,000 Jains were put to death by impalement, and a festival in the Madura temple is supposed to commemorate the gruesome event to this day. This, however, is little more than an unpleasant legend and cannot be treated as history. There is no reason to believe that, even in those days of intense religious strife, intolerance descended to such cruel barbarities. Nor are we asked to believe the story of his marriage. It is said that when, at the age of sixteen, he was married, the ceremony had hardly been completed when the newly wedded pair and all the wedding party were absorbed into the god-head. Sambandar had disputations with Buddhists also and visited many shrines and sang hundreds of hymns in his short life-time. He was the purest of all the saints, with no past to regret. He may be placed in the middle of the seventh century and his Pāṇḍyan contemporary was either Māravarman Avaniśūlāmaṇi or his grandson Arikesari Māravarman.

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About a century later came Sundaramūrtti of Nāvalūr. He was born of poor Brahmin parents but his beauty as a child was such that he attracted the attention of the local chieftain Narasinga Munaiyadaraiyan who, with the consent of the parents, brought him up. When his marriage with a girl of his own caste was about to take place it was stopped by the mysterious intervention of Śiva who claimed him as his slave. A little later Sundara fell in love with two women, one a dancing-girl of Tiruvālūr and the other a śūdra girl of Tiruvorriyūr. Their jealousies, it is said, could only be resolved by Śiva himself acting as a messenger to one of them. Like the other nāyanārs, Sundara is also credited with many miracles and the contemporary Chera ruler, Cheramān Perumāl, was his friend. They visited each other regularly and made their last journey to the abode of Śiva in Mount Kailāsa together, Sundara on a white elephant and Cheramān Perumāl on a horse. Sundara's devotion to Śiva was that of an intimate friend so that he was given the title Tambirān-Tōḷan (‘ Friend of God ’).

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A little later than Sundara came the illustrious Māṇikka-vāśagar. Legend makes him the minister of a Pāṇḍyan king; and on his account Śiva, the presiding deity of Madura, is said to have performed many miracles. His Pāṇḍyan contemporary was most probably Varaguṇa II (862-80). Māṇikka-vāśagar is said to have debated with Buddhists from Ceylon at Chidambaram and to have utterly vanquished them. His hymns form the Tiruvāśagam (‘ The Sacred Word ’) and another work, Tiruccirrambalakkōvai, is also ascribed to him.

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The hymns of Sambandar, Appar and Sundara form a varied treasure-house of religious experience which tells of mystical raptures and ecstasies, of moments of light when there is a vision of God and the world is transfigured in the light of his love, and of periods of gloom when all is dark and the blind seeker is filled with a sense of fear. Somewhat different and more exuberant are the outpourings of Māṇikka-vāśagar whose confessions are more outspoken and whose devotion is more impassioned. Some of them were keen controversialists and had no soft word for Buddhists and Jains.

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The Vaishnava wing of the movement is represented by twelve ālvārs (‘divers’ into the qualities of God) for whom orthodox tradition gives an impossible chronology. Three of them—Poygai, Pūdam, Pēy, born respectively at Kāñchī, Mallai and Mylapore—are believed to have come earliest. A beautiful legend tells how these three saints sheltered from the rain in a narrow room which could only just hold them standing, when Vishnu himself came seeking their company. The bhakti of these early saints is a gentle, simple devotion, altogether free from a sectarian outlook. This fact, and their employment of the veṇbā metre in their songs, points to a really early date for them—not later than the fifth or the sixth century A.D.

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Then came Tirumaliśai, born in the village of that name in Chingleput district and most probably an elder contemporary of Pallava Mahendravarman I. The story goes that at birth he was a shapeless mass of flesh abandoned by his parents and brought up by a śūdra. He is said to have practised Jainism, Buddhism and Śaivism before settling down finally as a Vaishnava yogi. His poems show a more controversial tone than those of the first three ālvārs, and this was quite natural to his age.

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After him we might place Tirumangai, one of the most celebrated of the ālvārs. He was the petty chieftain of Ālināḍu in the Tanjore district who, legend says, became a highwayman in order to carry off and marry the daughter of a Vaishnavite doctor of a higher caste, for whom he also changed his religion. He is said to have stolen a solid golden image of Buddha from a monastery in Negapatam to pay for renovating the temple of Śrīrangam. The clear reference to Vairamegha in his hymns places him in the middle of the eighth century, a date which discredits the story of his friendly meeting with Ñānasambandar at Shiyāli. Neither story can be treated as history, though each in its own way furnishes a clue to what his followers believed in later times. His hymns, and they are many, are equally full of good poetry and attacks on Jainism and Buddhism. To Śaivism, on the whole, he evinced a more friendly attitude and there are many resemblances in literary form and religious sentiments between Ñānasambandar and Tirumangai.

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A little later than Tirumangai, about the close of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, came a number of ālvārs. Periyālvār, a Brahmin of Śrivilliputtūr, won a religious disputation in the court of the Pāndya king Śrīmāra Śri Vallabha (815-62).

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The only woman among them, Āṇḍaḷ or Kōdai (Skt. Godā), was the real or adopted daughter of Periyāḷvār. In her intense devotion to Vishnu she dreamt of her marriage with that god, and described her experience in her hymns. This mystical union was the only one she knew, and in many ways the ardour of her devotion resembles that of Māṇikka-vāśagar, and her hymns are replete with allusions to Krishna stories. To about the same period belonged Tiruppāṇ, a minstrel of low caste, who was not permitted to enter the temple of Śrīrangam and was thus the Vaishnava counterpart of Nandan; and Toṇḍar-aḍip-poḍi (‘The dust of the feet of the devotees’), a Brahmin from Tanjore district whose real name was Vipranārāyaṇa and whose intolerance of Buddhism and Jainism was nearly as great as that of Tirumaṅgai.

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Kulaśekhara, the ruler of Kerala, proficient alike in Sanskrit and Tamil, was the next āḷvār who, among other shrines of Vishnu, sang of those at Chidambaram and at Tiruvāli—the latter, no doubt, a foundation of Tirumaṅgai. Lastly came the celebrated Nammāḷvār and his pupil Madhurakavi. The former was born of a Veḷḷāla family of Āḷvārtirunagari (also called Kurugūr) in the Tinnevelly district. His personal name was Māṛan and he seems to have gained the name Śaṭhakopa on the occasion of his initiation. He renounced the world in his thirty-fifth year to practise yoga. His hymns, the largest in number after those of Tirumaṅgai, are rightly regarded as embodying the deepest religious experience and philosophic thought of one of the greatest seers of the world.

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Yuan Chwang, who visited South India in 642, when the Hindu revival was just gathering momentum, did not notice the new movement, although in speaking of Mahārāṣṭra he mentions the worshippers of Deva (Śiva) who covered themselves with ashes. He mentions with regret that his own creed—Buddhism—was on the decline, but remarks repeatedly that it had yielded to Digambara Jainism. The triumph of the revivalist movement was largely achieved in the two centuries that followed. Public disputations which led kings and rulers to transfer their allegiance from one creed to another did much to bring this about. More important, however, was the use of the popular speech by the nāyanārs and the āḷvārs in their soul-stirring compositions, and the fact that these were set to simple tunes which the masses loved to sing.

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Another important, though less popular, aspect of the same revival is seen in the work of Kumārila and Śankara. They were Smārtas (traditionalists) who laboured in the cause not of any one sect in particular but of the ancient brahminical religion as it had been developed through the centuries. They held up as the religious ideal a youth occupied with ritual observances followed by an old age given up to philosophic contemplation. Kumārila frequently attacks Buddhists in his works, and tradition asserts that he did much to discredit them in the course of his many scholarly journeys. He elucidated the philosophy of ritualism (Mīmāmsā) in all its aspects, but Śankara was the greater thinker. Few details of his life are very well attested, but he is generally taken to be a Nambūdiri Brahmin from Kālaḍi on the banks of the Alwaye river in north Travancore, where he was born in 788. He lost his father early in life and turned ascetic, with Govinda yogi, a pupil of Gauḍapāda, as his guru. In a short life he travelled all over India propagating his new philosophy of a rigorously consistent monism and triumphing against all rivals who met him in debate. He reorganized the ascetic order of Hinduism on the model of the Buddhist order, and founded a number of maṭhas in different parts of India, the best known being those at Śringeri, Dvārakā, Badrināth, Puri and Kāñchi. His philosophy, which traces all apparent multiplicity and difference to illusion (māyā), is indeed derived from the Upanishads, but clearly owes much in detail to Mahāyānist speculation; nevertheless, he regarded Buddhism as Hinduism's chief enemy. Within a few years of his death in 820, one of his pupils, Śivasoma, was spreading his doctrine in distant Kambuja across the seas. Not without justice, it has been said that Śankara ‘would have a higher place among the famous names of the world had not his respect for tradition prevented him from asserting the originality which he undoubtedly possessed’.

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The work of the poet-saints of the Pāndya-Pallava period was continued in the age of the Cholas by a succession of poets and teachers of second rank. The Tamil hymns of the last age came to be treated as equal to the Veda and were collected and arranged in canonical books. Gradually they were regularly employed in the daily worship in temples, and their authors came to be regularly worshipped as manifestations of divinity. In fact the rise of the temple to an important place in the religious and social life of the land was the direct result of the revivalist movement. The age of the Imperial Cholas saw the construction of stone temples, great and small, in almost every town and village in their extensive empire. The great temples of Tanjore and Gangaikondaśolapuram were symbolic of the new age and, among many others, they were celebrated in hymns by contemporary poets.

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The Śaiva canon, in which these hymns also found a place, was arranged in the first instance in the reign of Rājarāja I by Nambi Āṇḍār Nambi and continuously added to till about the middle of the twelfth century. The Vaishnava canon, on the other hand, received its definitive shape at the hands of Nāthamuni. In his works he expressed the clear need he felt for the support and guidance of a living God, and pointed the way to a philosophical justification of the path of love. His grandson Āḷavandār, also called Yāmunācārya in memory of his visits to the sacred spots of Krishna's youth, was the next great name in the succession of Vaishnava ācāryas of the period. In his early years he was a man of the world, but a follower of Nāthamuni called him to the higher life. He then turned ascetic and led the life of a religious teacher, gathering disciples round him and preaching, writing and conducting debates. In his writings, often cited by Rāmānuja, he sought to establish the real existence of the supreme soul, and the eternal independence of the individual soul’.

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The greatest of the Vaishnava ācāryas was undoubtedly Rāmānuja. Born at Śrīperumbudūr, near Madras, in the first quarter of the eleventh century, he had his early philosophical training under Yādavaprakāśa of Kāñchipuram who belonged to the school of Śankara. Yāmunācārya is said to have once met Rāmānuja at Kāñchi but, unwilling to disturb the progress of the youth's studies, he uttered a prayer for the increase of Śrī Vaishnavas and went back to Śrīrangam. Rāmānuja then disagreed with the teachings of his guru and was strongly attracted by those of the Śrīrangam school. Yāmuna sent for him, but breathed his last before Rāmānuja could reach him. He succeeded Yāmuna as head of the maṭha at Śrīrangam, which gave him control over the temple and the school and a position of authority in the sect. He soon proved his mettle as a teacher and organizer, and his influence grew day by day. In his lectures and writings he refuted the Māyāvāda of Śankara, demonstrated that the Upanishads did not teach a strict monism, and built up the philosophy of Viśishtādvaita which reconciled devotion to a personal God with the philosophy of the Vedānta by affirming that ‘the soul, though of the same substance as God and emitted from him rather than created, can obtain bliss not in absorption but in existence near him’. He attempted to unify the sect by a reform of temple ritual wherever possible. Though he respected the rule that none but the twice-born may read the Veda, he was eager, like the ālvārs, to spread the doctrine of bhakti among Sūdras and even among the outcastes. He arranged that in certain important temples the outcastes should have the privilege of entering the temple on one day in the year. He travelled throughout India to propagate his ideas, and these journeys may well account for the wide influence of the sect in Northern India.

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The Cholas were ardent Śaivas and evidently did not view the growing influence of Rāmānuja with favour. We may not trust the legends of the persecution to which Rāmānuja and his followers were subjected in all their details, but the fact remains that he had to withdraw into Mysore about 1098 and could not return to Śrīrangam till 1122. During this time Rāmānuja won over the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana from Jainism and established a well-organized matha at Melkote. After his return to Śrīrangam, Rāmānuja continued his work there till he died in 1137. He is worshipped as an avatar in all Vaishnava temples.

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A younger contemporary of Rāmānuja was Nimbārka, a scholarly Bhāgavata Telugu Brahmin from Nimbāpura in Bellary district who spent most of his time in Brindāvan in Northern India. In religion he accepted the doctrine of surrender (prapatti) and translated it into a total devotion to Krishna and Rādhā. For him Rādhā is not merely the favourite mistress of Krishna but his eternal consort who lives with him for ever in Goloka, the highest heaven. Philosophically, he accepted the position that God, the soul, and the world were identical yet distinct, the position described as bhedā-bheda. Nimbārka thus became the founder of a new sect allied to, but distinct from, that of Rāmānuja. He expounded his views in a commentary on the Vedāntasūtras and in another work called Siddhāntaratna or Daśaśloki.

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The philosophic debate which, as against Śankara, laid increasing stress upon the reality of the world and the soul in distinction from Brahman ended in complete pluralism in the system of Madhva. Born shortly before 1200 in a Brahmin family at Kalyānapura in the Udipi taluk of South Kanara district, some forty miles west of Śringeri, he became a sanyāsi while he was still quite young and, like Rāmānuja, had his early training in the system of Śankara. But before his training was over, he broke away from that system and evolved his own based mainly on the *Bhāgavata-purāṇa*. Tradition credits him with a great capacity for physical endurance. A debate at Trivandrum with an *ācārya* of Śringeri ended in his discomfiture and he was robbed of his library and subjected to much annoyance and persecution. He toured Northern India where he had encounters with robbers, wild beasts and hostile chieftains in the course of his journeys. After resting for a while in Hardwar he retreated into the Himalayas for communion with Vyāsa and published his commentary on *Vedāntasūtras* on his return. Back at Udipi again, he built a temple of Krishna and spent his time preaching, converting, and defeating ‘illusionists’. After a ministry of nearly eighty years, and at the age of ninety-six, he disappeared as he sat teaching and was seen no more. He claimed to be an incarnation of Vāyu, the Wind-god. He was a prolific writer who disdained fine-spun arguments and found support for his teachings mainly from the Purāṇas and other later literature. He taught that the Universe is ruled by God as two persons—Vishnu and Lakshmi—and that the souls in the world are eternally distinct from Him. He recognized different orders of souls and consigned some of them to eternal damnation, which has led some modern critics to hold that ‘it is impossible not to see traces of Christian influence’ in his teaching. The centre of his religion is *bhakti* to Krishna as taught in the *Bhāgavata*, Rādhā having no place in it; but all other *avatārs* are revered, Śiva is worshipped, and ‘the five gods’ (*Pañcāyatana*) are recognized.

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The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed the rise of a schism among the followers of Rāmānuja due to a difference in their interpretation of *prapatti* (surrender). Some held that the devotee had to exert himself to win the grace of the Lord, while others thought that the Lord’s grace by itself conferred salvation on the soul that had entered the path of surrender. The position of the first school, Vaḍagalai (northern branch), is commonly summed up in the phrase *Markaṭakiśoranyāya*, the rule that the young monkey clings to its mother with an effort, and that of the second school, the Tengalai, is called *Mārjārakiśoranyāya*, the rule of the kitten which is carried by its mother in her mouth. There are other differences between the two schools, one of them being a decided preference for Tamil as against Sanskrit on the part of the Tengalais. The southern school looks upon Piḷḷai Lōkācārya (b. 1213) as its founder. He was the author of eighteen esoteric treatises (rahasyas), and had to leave Śrīrangam with the sacred image during the period of the Muslim inroads. He found an influential expositor in Maṇavāḷa Mahāmuni (b. circa 1370), the next great teacher and writer in the southern school. The leader of the northern school was Vedānta Dēśika (b. 1268). He once hid himself under a mass of dead bodies in Śrīrangam on the occasion of a Muslim incursion and escaped to Mysore until the storm blew over. As we have seen, he was poet, philosopher, and man of affairs.

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Another development of Vaishnavism based on the Bhāgavata was the rise from the close of the thirteenth century of a number of poet-saints whose popular songs stirred the life of Mahārāshtra as those of the nāyanārs and the āḷvārs had stirred the Tamil country centuries before. The earliest of them was Jñāneśvara, popularly called Dnyāndev Dnānōbā—a pupil according to some accounts of Vishnusvāmi, who was a dualist and founder of a sect of his own. Jñāneśvara was the author of an extensive work in Marāthi verse on the Bhagavad-gītā. His tone is Advaitic, though he also lays great stress on yoga; he was also the author of many abhangs or hymns. The movement begun by him continued through a succession of saints to Tukārām, the contemporary of Śivāji.

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Vaishnavism continued to be one of the dominant forces influencing the life of the people. No striking developments took place in the rest of our period in doctrine or practice. Occasionally the cult, especially that of Rādhā, tended to degenerate into erotic excesses. This is particularly true of the followers of Vallabhācārya (1479-1531), a Telugu Brahmin contemporary of Chaitanya. He was born in Benares, wrote several works in Sanskrit including a commentary on the Vedāntasūtras and became the founder of a system called Śuddhādvaita which exalted bhakti above knowledge. He is said to have vanquished Smārta scholars in public debate at the court of Krishnadeva Rāya. The ācāryas of the sect were known as Mahārājas and lived luxurious lives. The highest ambition of his followers was to become gopis and sport eternally with Krishna in his Heaven, an ideal which in practice degenerated into gross eroticism. Further, disputes between rival sects sometimes flared up with unusual violence. Nevertheless, Vaishnavism continued to be, in general, a noble and sweet influence on life. The Rāyas of Vijayanagar were great patrons of Vaishnavism; in 1556 Sadāśiva, at the request of Rāma Rāya, gave thirty-one villages to maintain the temple of Rāmānuja and the institutions attached to it at Śrīperumbudūr.

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To return to the history of Śaivism; we must note that by the side of the pure school of bhakti represented by the three saints of Dēvāram and Māṇikka-vāśagar, there existed other types of worshippers of Śiva whose tenets and practices are gruesome and repellent to modern taste. Such were the Pāśupatas, Kāpālikas, Kālāmukhas, and others whose presence in considerable numbers in centres like Kāñchi, Tiruvorriyūr, Melpāḍi and Koḍumbāḷūr is attested by inscriptions and literature from the seventh century onwards. Smearing the body with ashes from a burning ghat, eating food in a skull, and keeping a pot of wine, were some of the common practices of the Kālāmukhas; and some of these sects, if not all, were addicted to the worship of the female principle, which often degenerated into licentious orgies. The practice of the devotee offering his own head as a sacrifice to the goddess is shown in the sculpture and literature of the age of the Pallavas and Cholas.

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In the Deccan, under the Chālukyas of Bādāmi and the Rāshṭrakūṭas of Mānyakheta, both Śaivism and Vaishnavism flourished although Śaivism was, perhaps, the more favoured creed. Magnificent temples were built at Bādāmi, Paṭṭadakal, Mahākūṭa, Ellora, and other places, arcakas (priests) were imported from the Śaiva ācāryas on the banks of the Ganges, and daily worship and periodical festivals in these temples were richly endowed. At the same time the performance of Vedic sacrifices was continued, vratas (religious vows) were observed and dānas (gifts) made. The worship of Kārtikeya attained such prominence in the Bellary region in the tenth century that two tapovanas were dedicated to him as the supreme deity, a development initiated by some teachers from Bengal. In the Andhra country also, where Buddhism had flourished in great strength in the early centuries of the Christian era, there came about a strong Hindu revival. Besides the more famous shrines of Kālahasti, Dākshārāma and Śrīśailam, the temples of Mahāsena (Kārtikeya) at Chebrolu, Humkāraśankari at Bidapura, and Mallēśvara at Bezwada became important centres of pilgrimage. Maṭhas grew up and were occupied by monks who fed the poor, tended the sick, consoled the dejected and set up schools for the education of youth, and in the process many Buddhist shrines and *vihāras* were turned to Hindu uses.

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Hinduism has always been a house of many mansions, and the following description of the Arab geographer al-Idirisi, who wrote at the beginning of the twelfth century basing himself on earlier writers, may well be taken to apply to the whole of the Deccan from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. ‘Among the principal nations of India there are forty-two sects. Some recognize the existence of a Creator, but not of Prophets; while others deny the existence of both; some acknowledge the intercessory powers of graves and stones and others worship holy stones on which butter and oil is poured. Some pay adoration to fire and cast themselves into the flames. Others adore the sun and consider it the Creator and Director of the world. Some worship trees, others pay adoration to serpents which they keep in stables and feed as well as they can, believing this to be a meritorious work. Lastly there are some who give themselves no trouble about any kind of devotion, and deny everything.’

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Two developments in Śaivism which occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Tamil country and in the Deccan deserve particular mention. The first is the development of the Tamil Śaiva-siddhānta philosophy based on the Āgamas. The Āgamas are first mentioned by Sundaramūrtti, and the *Tirumandiram* of Tirumūlar (ninth century) is the earliest work to reflect the theology of the Āgamas. Āgamic terminology is also found in the writing of Māṇikka-vāśagar, who frequently speaks of the Āgamas as revealed by Śiva and openly expresses his dislike of the Vedānta, by which he means the monism of Śankara. But the first definite formulation of the philosophy of the Tamil Śaiva-siddhānta was in the work of Meykaṇḍadēva, a pious Veḷḷāla who lived early in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Pennār river, south of Mādras. He is reputed to have received instruction from Parañjōtimuni who was sent down from Kailāsa specially for that purpose. His *Śiva-Ñāna-Bōdam*, a translation into Tamil verse of twelve Sanskrit Sūtras from the *Raurava-āgama*, is looked upon as the fountainhead of the dogmatics of the system. The extensive philosophic literature that sprang from this work has already been reviewed. The progress of discussion led to the growth of different schools within the fold of the Śaiva-siddhānta. But in the main the system sought, like other philosophies of religion, to determine the relations of God, matter and the soul. It declared that matter and souls were, like God, eternal. The Absolute through its ‘grace-form’ is for ever engaged in the rescue of souls from the bondage of matter and the three stains (malas) which defile their purity. ‘As body and mind together form a unity so God is the soul whose body is the Universe of nature and of man. He is not identical with either; He is not their substance but he dwells in them and they in Him. Advaita is not Oneness, but inseparability. To realize this union is the high calling of the soul.’ It is for the *guru* or the teacher to let in the light, but Śiva is the source of all enlightenment, sole embodiment of intelligence and grace, and hence the true object of all devout aspiration. The system transcends caste and ritual and calls for inner devotion. According to one writer contentment, justice and wisdom are the flowers of worship.

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The other development in Śaivism (also based on the twenty-eight Śaiva Āgamas) was the growth of Vīra-śaivism or the Liṅgāyat cult in Karṇātaka and the Telugu country. Basava, the prime minister of Kalacuri Bijjala, king at Kalyāṇi (1156), is usually regarded as the founder of the sect. Liṅgāyat tradition avers that the sect is very old and was founded by five ascetics—Ekōrāma, Paṇḍitārādhya, Rēvaṇa, Maruḷa, and Viśvārādhya—who were held to have sprung from the five heads of Śiva. Basava, they say, was but the Reviver of the Faith; but we know for a fact that the five ascetics named were all contemporaries of Basava, some older, some younger. The early history of Vīra-śaivism is therefore still somewhat uncertain. Two features of the sect, however—the prominent place held by monasteries, and the more or less complete social and religious equality among the sectarians—have been held to be due to the influence of Jainism and Islam. Liṅgāyats regard Śiva as supreme and must worship only Him; hence the name Vīra-śaivas, stalwart Śaivas. They must also worship each his own chosen *guru*. Each Liṅgāyat, man or woman, carries a *liṅga* about his person, usually in a silver or wooden reliquary suspended from the neck. Reverence is paid by Liṅgāyats to the sixty-three *nāyaṉārs* of the Tamil country whom they recognize as Purātanas (elders) and to seven hundred and seventy later saints among whom are included Māṇikka-vāśagar, Basava, and his chief disciples. An account of Liṅgāyat literature has been given already.

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The Ārādhya Śaivas of the Telugu country differed from the Lingāyats in some respects. They followed Mallikārjuna Paṇḍitārādhya, a contemporary of Basava, in refusing to accept the latter's rejection of the Veda and renunciation of caste. But the relations of Ārādhya Śaivism with Lingāyatism were friendly, and both joined together in the fourteenth century in resisting the inroads of Muslims and in preparing the way for the foundation of Vijayanagar.

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Under the Rāyas of Vijayanagar all types of religion found encouragement, and most of the famous temples of South India were enlarged at this time, particularly by the addition of large gōpuras or entrance towers and corridors and maṇḍapas. A few temples were altogether rebuilt on a new integral plan, like that of Madura under Tirumalai Nāyaka (1623-59). The periodical festivals in most of these temples were also richly endowed, and brought together people from all classes of society including groups of peripatetic merchants and traders. The festivals of the capital city of Vijayanagar, in particular the Mahānavami (nine days' festival) in October, were occasions of great display which have been described by many foreign travellers who had occasion to witness them. Their accounts leave little doubt that there was widespread slaughter of buffaloes and sheep as sacrifices to the goddess, hook-swinging, and other bad practices of a similar character.

Buddhism, Jainism, and Ājīvikas

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The early history of Buddhism in South India has been incidentally sketched in the opening chapters of this book. Its decline in Andhradeśa, where it had flourished in the early centuries A.D., was noticed by Yuan Chwang, and this decline proceeded further after his time. The renascent Hinduism of the period began the worship of the Buddha at Amarāvati as an incarnation of Vishnu and seems likewise to have converted many other Buddhist centres into Hindu shrines. In the Tamil country, Buddhism declined rapidly as a result of the activities of the Hindu saints and reformers which we have noticed in this chapter, but it lingered on feebly in different parts of the country. Under the Cholas there were Buddhist settlements in Negapatam on the east coast and at Śrīmūlavāsam in the west; and Buddhism was considered sufficiently important for some scenes from Buddha's life to be represented in decorative panels in a balustrade of the great temple of Tanjore. The ancient Velgam Vehera on the banks of the Periyakulam tank near Trincomalee in Ceylon was remodelled and considerably extended, and renamed Rājarāja Perumbaḷḷi early in the eleventh century; a large life-size limestone image of the Buddha and an inscribed bronze lampstand are among the finds in the vihāra—clear proof of the active interest of the great Chola monarch in the spiritual well-being of his subjects in Ceylon. An important work of Tamil grammar, the Virasōliyam composed in Virarājēndra's time, had a Buddhist scholar for its author. One section of Kāñchipuram bore the name of Buddhakāñchī to a relatively late date, and a Buddhist monk from one of the monasteries there sang the praises of a Hindu ruler of eastern Java in the fourteenth century.

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In the north-west of the Deccan also, new vihāras were coming up on behalf of Buddhism late in the ninth century. Thus, in 853, a monk from Bengal built a great monastery (mahāvihāra) in Krishnagiri (Kaṇheri) for the use of the sangha and endowed it with one hundred gold drammas. In the same neighbourhood a meditation hall was constructed for monks in 877 by a minister of the Śilāhāras of Konkan, and other endowments are recorded at the same time and place for the regular worship of the Buddha.

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On the whole, however, Jainism had more influence than Buddhism on the life of the people, particularly in Karnātaka and in the Tamil country owing to the striking contributions made by Jaina authors to the literatures of Kannada and Tamil. Some account of them has already been given in the last chapter on literature. The Jaina temple built at Aihole by Ravikirti in the reign of Pulakeśin II is said to be the abode of all excellences, and Jaina temples and monasteries continued to be built everywhere in the extensive dominions ruled by the Chālukyas and the Rāshtrakūtas. Rāshtrakūta Amoghavarsha I, for instance, found solace by retiring to a Jaina monastery more than once in the course of his long reign. Many of the early Western Ganga monarchs were followers of Jainism, and it also found patronage under the Eastern Chālukyas. Amma II (mid-tenth century) built two Jinālayas and established satras (feeding houses) attached to them where śramaṇas (Jaina monks) of all the four castes were to be fed.

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Jainism had much more in common with Hinduism than Buddhism, and many popular beliefs and practices were common to both the systems. Thus in 812 a Jaina temple was endowed for the removal of trouble caused to a Chālukya Vimalāditya by the planet Śanaiścara (Saturn). In many Jaina grants we find that the donees are required to use the proceeds of the endowment for their daily rites and observances in terms identical with those employed in Hindu donations; and influential guilds of merchants often included a strong Jaina wing in their membership. Soon after the establishment of Vijayanagar, Jains complained to king Bukkarāya of persecution by the Vaishnavas. The monarch interceded (1368) and decreed that both parties should practise their respective religions with equal freedom and without mutual interference. Though Jainism has been steadily losing ground it has not altogether disappeared from the country—particularly in parts of Gujarat.

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Another sect outside the pale of Hinduism, which continued to count some adherents in South India though it had disappeared elsewhere, was that of the Ājīvikas. Founded by Gośāla Maskariputra, a contemporary of the Buddha and Mahāvīra, this strictly deterministic school was influential in the Mauryan period in the North, and Aśoka and his successor Daśaratha presented fine rock-cut caves to it. They believed in an inexorable Niyati (Destiny) which man was unable to counteract. The South Indian Ājīvika monks practised severe asceticism, and probably influenced by Hinduism and Mahāyāna Buddhism, came to look upon Gośāla as ‘an ineffable divinity’; they also developed the ‘view that all change and movement were illusory, and that the world was in reality eternally and immovably at rest’. The inscriptions show that they were sometimes subjected to a special tax levied on them at least by the Cholas.

Islam

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The contact of South India with Islam is much older than that of the North. A Muslim fleet first sailed in Indian waters in 636, when a governor serving under Caliph Umar sent an army to Thāna; but Umar disapproved of this. Very soon afterwards, Muslim traders continuing the contacts of pre-Muslim days settled in numerous parts of the Malabar coast, married the women of the country, and the issue of such unions became the Māppiḷas (Moplahs). Such Muslim traders were encouraged by Hindu Rājas who used them to procure horses for their cavalry and for manning their fleets. Al-Ishtakhri, an Arab writer of the tenth century who knew India at first hand, says that there were Musalmans and Jumma Masjids in the cities of the Rāshtrakūta empire. A doubtful legend relates the conversion to Islam of the last of the Perumāl rulers of Kerala, Cheramān Perumāl. He is said to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and to have sent directions from there to the rulers of his homeland to receive Muslims hospitably and to build mosques for them. Travellers like Masūdi (916) and Ibn Batūtā (fourteenth century) testify to the presence of Muslims and mosques all along the west coast. There were Muslim settlements on the east coast also, of which Kāyal-pattanam and Nagore were the most important. Islam, it is said, was preached actively near Trichinopoly early in the eleventh century by a Sayyid prince of Turkey, Nathad Vali, who became a missionary, came to India, and spent his last years converting many Hindus. His tomb is still pointed out in the city. According to Ibn Batūtā, the army of Hoysala Ballāla III included 20,000 Musalmans. The Muslim invasions from the North and their consequences, the rise of the Bāhmani kingdom and its relations with Vijayanagar, have been dealt with elsewhere. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Māppillas were estimated by Duarte Barbosa to have formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, but the arrival of the Portuguese checked the growth of Muslim power and ruined the Arab trade.

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It is very difficult to say how far Islam influenced Hindu religious thought and practice in the South. Some traits of the Hindu revival, such as the increasing emphasis on monotheism, on emotional worship, on self-surrender, on the need for devotion to a spiritual teacher, as well as the growing laxity in caste rules and indifference to ritual at least among some sects, have all been held to be in some way or other the result of Islamic influence. But these developments may well be explained from the internal history of Hinduism itself, and there is no direct evidence of the active influence of Islam on their growth. Perhaps, after all, it is not an accident that, as Eliot has observed, sects grew ‘more definite in doctrine and organization, especially among Vishnuites, as Hindus became more familiar with Islam’. As we have shown, however, there were Musalmans in plenty who, in general, were left free both to worship and to proselytize.

Christianity

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A persistent but doubtful tradition ascribes the introduction of Christianity in South India to St Thomas, in the first century A.D. Cosmas, the Alexandrian merchant who travelled in South India in 522, found a church at Quilon and another in Ceylon, both Nestorian. Copper-plate grants to Malabar Christians, the earliest of which is dated 774, show that they had then gathered native converts, though they were not yet very numerous. The strength of the community was increased by a number of immigrations of Christians from western countries, from Baghdad, Nineveh, Jerusalem and other places.

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There was a Christian community at St Thomas Mount, but no authentic evidence of its condition is forthcoming before Marco Polo (1293) who first reports the story of the martyrdom of St Thomas on the Mount, but the shrine on the Greater Mount was visited by Hindus and Muslims as well as by the Christians themselves. Thirty years after Marco Polo heard the story of St Thomas, Friar Odoric found some fifteen houses of Nestorians beside the church, but the church itself was filled with idols. A century later Conti reckoned a thousand Nestorians in the city; yet early in the sixteenth century Barbosa found the church in ruins, with a Muslim fakir charged to keep a lamp in it.

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Christian travellers in the Middle Ages occasionally complain of the paucity of Christians in South India and of the persecution to which they were sometimes subjected, and Friar Jordanus (1321-30) wrote enthusiastically of the great scope that India offered for missionary activity in the cause of Christianity.

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Active propagation of Christianity, however, began only after the arrival of the Portuguese and of St Francis Xavier (c. 1545). But these efforts did not make much headway except among the lower classes, and what is more, they led to the rise of acute schisms and quarrels between the new Catholic Christians and the other sects that had already established themselves in different parts of the country. The coming of other Christian nations like the Dutch only added to the confusion. We have already seen that the Portuguese policy of turning religious propaganda to political use roused the resentment of even the tolerant rulers of Vijayanagar and their feudatories.

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It cannot be said that in the period covered by this book Christianity exerted any potent influence on the life of the people as a whole.

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*Archaeological Reports of Ceylon*, 1953, 1954 A. L. BASHAM: *The Wonder that was India* (London, 1954) R. G. BHANDARKAR: *Vaishnavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems* (Strassburg, 1913) ESTLIN CARPENTER: *Theism in Medieval India* (London, 1921) TARA CHAND: *Influence of Islam on Indian Culture* (Allahabad, 1936) SIR CHARLES ELIOT: *Hinduism and Buddhism*, 3 vols. (London, 1921) J. N. FARQUHAR: *An Outline of the Religious Literature of India* (London, 1920)

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