The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c12.s4.1

c12.s4.1

A South Indian classic of this period which may be compared to the finest romances of Sanskrit literature and which enables us to feel a bit of the secular interests of Hindu India is the Tamil work, the *Maṇimekhalāi*. The kind of Buddhism propagated in and through it appears to have no reference to the *Mahāyāna* system associated with Āryadeva or Nāgārjuna. The romance is evidently *Hīnayāna* in general features.