It will thus be clear that the course of development of this particular section of the school of bhakti which for the Aryan or the northern part of it might reach back to the Svetasvatara and Atharvasiras Upanishads and may even be anterior, is found if somewhat in a rudimentary form in the South in the earliest extant literature of the classical Tamils where Siva is regarded as the dominating deity and may even be regarded with something of personal attributes. Therefrom the development takes on the form of devotion and personal service to the personal god Siva by human individuals with a view to the attainment of salvation which to the Saivas is nothing less than absorption into Siva. Throughout the age of the Pallavas, roughly from about A.D. 200 to 900, this development takes on the peculiarly emotional form of out-pouring of these devotees' love to God, and the whole body of literature may be characterised as emotional. Each particular poem might be regarded as thrown in form to illustrate the various modes of expression of emotion in current use in the literature of the Tamils to which some similarity could be discovered in the Gatha Saptasati of Hala. It is this sensuous character of the emotion, which has drawn particularly from human analogies and human experience, that gives the peculiar character to this class of literature and associates with this somewhat realistic form of bhakti, this peculiar characteristic of the Dravidian country. While therefore the analogy which the Tamil Saivas acknowledge between the Vedic Mantras and the pious songs of the sixty-three devotees and their immediate followers, is not without justification, there is this peculiarity to be noted that this attempt at devotion is realistic to a degree that appeals straight to the heart of human beings and justifies itself by the experience of each individual. This realism may be carried too far and may be liable to abuse, and such abuse is not altogether without illustration in later developments. The establishment of the ascendancy of the Cholas at the commencement of the tenth century introduces a new factor. The Cholas were many of them Saivas themselves, and it is the Saivism of the ruling sovereigns that is the real factor in its further development. The period seems to be an age of renaissance, and there is a renascent spirit in the general attempt that one notices at the rehabilitating of the works of all worth having for civilised life. It is as part of this general movement that the schools of bhakti, both Saiva and Vaishnava, attempt to provide themselves with a philosophical system intended, chiefly for purpose of controversy, and therefore providing the very essentials of sectarian religion. In this re-modelling Sanskritic culture from the North perhaps bears the main part. It was not that there was no Sanskrit influence before, but now it is not a question of influence. It is a question of copying the actual model as it were of the post-Vedic Sanskrit works. This is clearly traceable in the attempt to provide the school of Siva-bhakti with the characteristic gastric literature of its own. This character is discernible in Southern India throughout the whole period extending from A.D. 900 to almost 1700. Hence every scholar of eminence of this particular age is primarily a controversialist, and everything else afterwards. This is also the age of the special school of Sanskrit commentators, and controversialists especially, and the same character is visible even in the vernacular works of the time. The age therefore may be likened to the so-called age of the Sutras in the north.

Comment and controversy lead on to reform, and reformers become the normal product of the age. The history of the two reformers of the Vira Saiva sect is wrapped in considerable obscurity in spite of the fact that there is a Basava Purana and a Channa Basava Purana, dealing professedly with the legendary history of these two respectively. The former of the two constitutes the first of the three canonical works of the Lingayats, and is a work composed in the thirteenth cemtury, whereas the other one Channa Basava Purana is a work belonging to the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Basava's death according to the latter is ascribed to a year corresponding to A.D. 785 which is impossible from the known dates of Bijjala with whom Basava is connected in all accounts. The Channa Basava Purana was composed by the Poet Virupaksha in the year Salivahana 1507, corresponaing to A.D. 1585. The historical value of these works therefore seems comparatively little as several misstatements of main incidents, such as the death of Bijjala, make it clear.1

The Bijjala Raya Charitam which is the Jain version of the story of Bijjala differs in very many particulars from the puranas of the Lingayats. Bijjala is there said to have been poisoned at the instance of Basava, and had time enough to warn his son who is called Immadi Bijjala that it was Basava who was responsible for the deed.

The fact of Basava's death is mis-stated here and the dating even is wrong as Bijjala's death is ascribed to a date 12 years before Bijjala's abdication in favour of his son in A.D. 1167 and even before 1156, when Bijjala established himself upon the throne. The actual date given in the Jain peom, Kaliyuga 4255 expired would correspond to Saka 1077 or A.D. 1154-55.2 In spite of these discrepancies, there is enough in the circumstantial accounts for assuming that Basava and Channa Basava did live and were reformers of the Saiva religion as it was practised, one result of the reforms being an aggressive assertion of the superiority of this particular Saiva sect as against Jainism which seems to have been the religion of Bijjala.

1 For a summary account of these two Puranas in English see J. Bom. A.S., Vol. VIII, pp. 65-221.

2 This actual date was taken by Sir Walter Elliot apparently from a work which he calls Bijjala Kavya. The late Dr. Fleet does not find the authority for the statement however. Mad. J. of Lit. and Science, VII, pp. 213-14. Bom. Gaz., Vol. 1, Part ii, p. 481, Note 3.