poems, is a Jaina work. Eight thousand Jaina, it is said, each wrote a couplet, and the whole when joined together formed the famous Nālaḍiyār. To-day this consists of only four hundred verses, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the action of a hostile monarch who flung the whole multitude of poems into a stream and destroyed all but four hundred particularly good ones! Each of the verses is quite unconnected with the other, but has a most unimpeachable moral, and so they are taught in Tamil schools to this day.
More famous still is the Kurraḷ of Tiruvaḷḷuvar, the masterpiece of Tamil literature. Its author, an outcaste by birth, is claimed by every sect as belonging to their faith, but Bishop Caldwell 'considers its tone more Jaina than anything else'.[1] In any case it must come from the earliest period. Another name that adds lustre to these times is that of a Jaina lady Avvaiyār 'the Venerable Matron', one of the most admired amongst Tamil poets, who is said to have been a sister of Tiruvaḷḷuvar. Nor was it only amongst the fields of poesy that the Jaina gained renown; a famous old dictionary and the great Tamil grammar are also accredited to them.
Jaina writers also laid the foundations of Telugu literature, and classical Kanarese literature begins with a great succession of Jaina poets and scholars. The period of their greatest activity runs from the eighth to the twelfth century.
But the greatest of all Jaina writers was undoubtedly Hemaċandra, He was born in Dhandukāa near Aḥmadābād in A. D. 1088 of Jaina parents, his real name being probably Ċāṅgadeva. His mother dedicated him to the religious life under the care of a monk named Devaċandra, who took him to Cambay, where he was eventually ordained, receiving the new name of Somaċandra. In Cambay he studied logic, dialectics, grammar and poetry, and proved himself a past master in every branch of study he took up.
- ↑ Imperial Gazetteer, ii. 435
