The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s2.31

c35.s2.31

When Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim, visited Southern India in A. D. 640, Digambara Jains and Jain temples were numerous in both the Pallava realm (Dravida) and the Pāṇḍya kingdom (Malakoṭṭa).² His account does not offer the slightest indication of religious persecution. We must hold, therefore, that the persecution which certainly occurred about that time was subsequent to the pilgrim's visit. It is well established that king Kūna, Sundara, or Neḍumāran Pāṇḍya, who had been brought up as a Jain and was married to a Chola princess, was converted about the middle of the seventh century, by his consort and the famous saint Tirujñānasambandar, to the faith of Siva, which was warmly supported by the Chola dynasty. King Sundara displayed even more than the proverbial zeal of a convert, and persecuted his late co-religionists, who refused to apostatize, with the most savage cruelty, inflicting on no less than eight thousand innocent persons a horrible death by impalement. Certain unpublished sculptures on the walls of a temple at Trivatūr (Tiruvattūr) in Arcot record these executions, and are regarded as confirmation of the tradition.¹ The position of the Jain religion in the South was much shaken by the persecution, which evidently was a reality, although possibly exaggerated.