Page:Tamil studies.djvu/139

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112
TAMIL STUDIES

adoption of the Brahmanical customs must have laid the foundation for this social distinction.

We have said above that the Jains belong to the right-hand division, although one would, on the contrary, expect to find them in the left-hand. The reason for the change is, says a Mysore inscription of A. D. 1368, that the Brahmans and Jains were fighting for the use of the five big drums and the Kalasa, a privilege usually exercised by the right-hand castes, when in the same year the then king of Mysore, Vira Bukka Raya, effected a compromise between the Jains and the Brahmans, and ever since that time the Jains have been admitted as belonging to the right-hand party.

To summarise: the distinction into right-hand and left-hand castes, now maintained by the agricultural classes on the one side and by the artizans on the other, originated in the Chola country about 1010 A. D., the cause which led to it being,(1) the enmity that had existed between the Cholas and the neighbouring kings,(2) the aspirations of certain low castes to attain a higher social status, stimulated by the newly inculcated antiBrahmanical doctrines of Basava, and (3) the struggle between the Jaina and the Hindu religions for existence in the Pallava and the Kadamba countries. Or, to put it more briefly, this faction dispute is the outcome of the political, social and religious jealousies amongst the Hindus of South India during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Christian era.