The great temples of South India, which came into existence, at any rate the great majority of them, in the age of the Pallavas beginning from the time of the early Chola Ko-Chengan, received considerable additions by way of patronage under the Cholas. These naturally constituted active centres for the propagation of the teachings both of the Saivas and of the Vaishnavas. The chief opponents they had in view in all their controversies seem to be the Jains. This is but natural, as Jainism was just emerging full-grown owing to the active support and patronage of the Rashtrakutas who seemed several of them to have been of that persuasion. The active controversy against the Jains began with the Saivas of the days of

Sambandar and Appar under the great Pallava Mahendravarman and his contemporary Pandya Sundara. These religious controversies seemed to have attained to a considerable degree of bitterness that a series of general persecutions of the Jains have become the common feature of the lives of these saints, Saiva and Vaishnava, compiled in a later period. The most prominent instances of these are a persecution set up at the instance of Sambandar by his Pandya contemporary Nedumaran, otherwise Kun Pandya and Sundara, who was at first a Jain and was converted to Saivism by Sambandar, The story has it that the whole body of Jains were impaled by order of the monarch at the instigation of the Saint. The late Dr. Vincent Smith has so far gone in accepting this story as embodying a historical incident that he regards it as one of the genuine though exceptional instances of persecution for religion. He relies principally upon the evidence of a painting of this incident on the walls of the great temple at Madura. It is not only on the walls of the temple of Madura, but in all the bigger Siva temples of the south the representation of this story is found. The historicity of this incident will have to depend upon the particular date at which the painting or even a stone representation of this incident, was set where it is. When once the hagiologists set the fashion by giving currency to these stories, it is not difficult to understand that they passed into popular currency, and in the representation of various lilas of Siva or Vishnu (performance of miracles in sport) or any other God, these would naturally figure. This position is most clearly illustrated in the renovation of temples carried out by the class of Nattu-kottai Chettis at the present time. Whether pictures of these already existed or no, such representations, as constituted one of the lilas of Siva, are made by them without sacerdotal impropriety. It does not require much interval of time even, as we have already stated, that a lithic representation of the performance of Ekantada Ramayya is found built in a temple constructed at a period following close upon the age of this Ramayya. It need hardly be said that it is impossible for history to believe that Ramayya actually cut off his head and got it back after it was turned to ashes. The stories of such persecution occurred time and again in the accounts of the hagiologists (Saiva, Vaishnava, Jaina, or Bauddha), and these stories have always a family likeness in the details regarding the incidents, thereby stamping them as pious fabrications of latter-day hagiologists.

The Jains are said to have conducted a wholesale persecution of the Bauddhas under a king by name Himasitala at the instance of a Jain Acharya Akalanka. A similar story is told of

Ramanuja of having persecuted the Jains by getting them ground in oil-mills. Vishnuvar-dhana, the Hoysala, who adopted Vaishnavism, is said to have perpetrated this atrocity. We have pointed out elsewhere 1 that the chief queen of Vishnuvardhana died a Jain. His loyal and faithful commander-in-chief of all of his forces lived and died a Jain under him, and his son succeeded in the same persuasion. When late in life, a son was born to the king, the tutor for the son was a most respected Jain Acharya. It need hardly be added therefore that these stories of persecution as they are found current could hardly be regarded as historical, and one ought to look for satisfactory evidence in each separate case before accepting the historicity of any of these incidents of persecution, or even for postulating that no persecution took place. This does not necessarily involve the assumption that religious riots and excesses by parties of people were always non-existent. The Rashtrakutas, as already pointed out, were great patrons of the Jains and in the best days of Rashtrakuta Empire it was that Jainism did its best work in literature in the Southern Maharatta country and Mysore. These are the portions of South India that happen to be the great Jain centres even now, and in that region Jainism flourished even in the age of the great Cholas. One of the constant complaints of the destructive operations of the war carried on by the Cholas against the latter was that the Cholas destroyed these Jain monasteries and temples, without showing the usual consideration due to these holy places. Jainism continued to flourish under the Chalukyas and under the Hoysalas at a later time and even in the age of Vijayanagar.

1 Ancient India, Chapter IX (The History Of These Pallavas).

The Saiva Adiyars and Vaishnava Alvars, both of them had to carry on an active propaganda against Buddhism and Jainism, and there are many indications in their works that the aim of their teaching was to overcome these two religions which apparently had a large popular clientele. Both Kumarila Bhatta and Sankara-charya's works give clear indication that they set to themselves the serious task of controverting the Jains and Buddhists, also incidentally of various other forms of teaching outside the sphere of the Veda. It was this need for a controversy that gave the turn to the literature both of the Saivas and the Vaishnavas, and as we advance in this history, we find the tendency is in this body of literature to develop a controversial character.

This work so far as the Vaishnavas were concerned was carried on for three generations both in Srirangam and in Kanchi, when the Maham-madan invasions broke in upon South India.