Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
When talking about contemporary Jainism in
the Tamil-speaking region, one should resist the
ideological tendencies, which are strong in a state
dominated by decades of Dravidian nationalism,
to consider some Jain communities “more Tamil”
and consequentially “more Tamil Jain” than others.
Such a stance may lead to a reductionist represen-
tation of Jainism in this part of India. While the
dominant Tamil historiographies have comprehen-
sively denied the Jains’ participation in being Tamil,
Dravidian-inspired ones have shifted that boundary
of exclusion and claimed for so-called Tamil Jains
(i.e. those Jains who linguistically self-identify pri-
marily with Tamil) a place within the history of the
Tamil-speaking region to the detriment of others,
such as the so-called Marwari and Gujarati Jains of
Tamil Nadu, who need to be included in a compre-
hensive assessment of the Jains in this region. Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains have been poorly
acknowledged as contributors to Jainism in Tamil
history. The Tamil Jains have been, in turn, func-
tionalized and subordinated by Śaiva-dominated
historiographies and overpowered and overshad-
owed by the economic success of their Marwari and
Gujarati coreligionists. The striking social dispari-
ties among the Jains of the Tamil-speaking region,
which roughly divide the Tamil Jain from the Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jain communities, have
reinforced long-standing historical anxieties among
the Tamil Jains and produced much ambivalence
toward their fellow Jains. Tamil Marwari and Tamil
Gujarati Jains, in turn, have kept a keen eye on the
changing fortunes of ethnic-nationalist movements
within Tamil Nadu, with which the Tamil Jains have
traditionally tried to align themselves.
This situation has contributed in no small degree
to the problem of how to write in a unified manner
about Jainism in this part of India. Much of the inclu-
sion and exclusion over the last century has been
driven by language-oriented territorial politics, with
those Jains who have been identified as Tamil stand-
ing a better chance at participating in the Dravidian
project than those bearing a name that betrays their
imagined otherness. The various Jain communities’
multiple affiliations have kept them historically
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 BEJ
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vulnerable to any movement driven by ideologies
that demand exclusive identification with, among
other things, one language and one territory. Jain-
ism in the Tamil-speaking region has neither been
limited historically to contemporary Tamil Nadu or
even South India, nor have its members been self-
defined exclusively through one language.
The Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains
have had strong ties to what are now Rajasthan and
Gujarat, while the history of Tamil Jains is entwined
with that of the Jains in Karnataka, Andhra, and
Kerala. All of them have histories as well as social
and religious ties that go back and reach out both
to various parts of the Tamil-speaking region – even
those no longer inhabited by Jains – and to the
sacred Jain landscapes of northern and northeast-
ern India. Though Tamil is the language that Jains,
like anybody else in this region, grow up with and
learn to use, many have felt linguistically at home
and have made their voices heard in a vast array
of other languages that include Marwari, Gujarati,
Hindi, and Prakrit for the Tamil Marwari and Tamil
Gujarati Jains; Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and
Sanskrit for the Tamil Jains; and Prakrit, Persian,
Tamil, and, in more recent history, English for both.
Although Jain history in the region reaches back to
about one-and-a-half millennia before the emer-
gence of the Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jain
communities and the modern practice to differenti-
ate these groups in the first place, both have had a
shared regional history of about two centuries now,
with ties that have grown much stronger over the last
50 years or so. Today, Tamil Jains, on the one hand,
and Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains, on the
other, as much as they may be divided by economic
class, linguistic practice, or genealogical memory,
form a unit that is both uniquely Tamil in a non-
Dravidian sense and connecting the Tamil-speaking
region to the larger South Asian world, as it has been
throughout its history. This article gives an overview
of contemporary and past articulations of Jainism in
the Tamil-speaking region in three steps by looking
at them first through an ethnographic lens, second
through a textual one, and third through an archaeo-
logical one.
354 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
Contemporary Communities
The contemporary Jain communities of the Tamil-
speaking region, whether Tamil Marwari, Tamil
Gujarati, or Tamil, are mostly located in northeast-
ern Tamil Nadu, namely in the districts of Chennai,
Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Viluppuram,
Cuddalore, and Thanjavur, as well as in the Tamil sec-
tions of the Union Territory of Puducherry. Outside
of that region, urban centers further south in which
Jains of either affiliation have found their home are
Madurai, Trichy (Tiruchirappalli), and Coimbatore.
Small communities, mostly of Tamil Marwari Jains,
are located across Tamil Nadu in Vellore, Coonoor,
Ooty, Salem, Erode, Tirupur, and in the far south in
Tirunelveli and Nagercoil. With the dramatic demo-
graphic changes that have taken place in India over
the last few decades, particularly in the agrarian sec-
tor, the current distribution of Jain communities in
Tamil Nadu too has been highly fluid. From the early
21st century onward, the old distinction between a
rural Tamil Jain community and urban Tamil Mar-
wari and Tamil Gujarati Jains has been rapidly dis-
solving inasmuch as the Tamil Marwari and Tamil
Gujarati Jains have embraced select rural Tamil Jain
centers, and younger generations of Tamil Jains have
been shifting from their ancestral towns and villages
to the big cities, predominantly Chennai. While the
2011 census of India numbers listed the Jain popula-
tion in Tamil Nadu at 89,265, breaking down the fig-
ure into 10,084 for the rural and 79,181 for the urban
areas, the numbers provided to me by select Jain
community leaders in 2018 were circa 100,000 for
the Tamil Marwari-Gujarati combined and 25,000–
35,000 for the Tamil Jains. That means that approxi-
mately 0.0012% of the population of Tamil Nadu are
Jains, compared to 0.02% Sikh, 5.86% Muslim, and
6.12% Christian (2011 census of India). The Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains identify mostly
as Śvetāmbaras with, again according to commu-
nity estimates, circa 50,000 Mūrtipūjaka Jains (of
whom c. 40,000 are Tapā Gaccha and c. 10,000 are
Kharatara Gaccha), circa 15,000 Terāpanthīs, and
circa 3,500 Sthānakavāsīs. The numbers of Marwari
and Gujarati Digambaras in Tamil Nadu were said
to be around 5,000. The Tamil Jains refer to them-
selves as camaṇar (Pkt. samaṇa, meaning “Jain” in
the Tamil context) or tamiḻ camaṇar (“Tamil Jain”)
and, in a more recent adoption of the term “Jain,”
tamiḻ pēcum jaiṉar (“Tamil-speaking Jain”). They
1 Flügel, 2006, 341–342.
identify as Digambara (Tam. tikampara), but have a
very diffuse sense of sectarian distinctness, and only
among the elites is there an awareness of a historical
Bīsapanthī affiliation.1
Contemporary Tamil Marwari and
Tamil Gujarati Jains
The descendants of the first traders from Marwar
(which includes the districts of Barmer, Jalore,
Jodhpur, Nagaur, and Pali) have become a major
demographic force. They have remained the Jain
economic elites of the Tamil-speaking region. In the
1820s, the first migrants belonging to the Śvetāmbara
Mūrtipūjaka Kharatara Gaccha arrived from
Phalodi (Jodhpur district), Kuchera (Nagaur dis-
trict), and Bikaner, in what was then Madrasapat-
tinam (present-day Chennai). They settled around
Mint Street or Sowcarpet (Ceḻakārpēṭṭai), which is
still the most visible center of Tamil Marwari Jain-
ism, and in 1838 established a dādābāṛī, a shrine
to the four dādāgurus (four semideified Kharatara
Gaccha mendicants). This was the first recorded
Śvetāmbara shrine in the Tamil-speaking region.2
The institution, and trust associated with it, remains
the leading Śvetāmbara Jain institution of Tamil
Nadu. Migration from Gujarat occurred around
the same time, with the two communities converg-
ing along Jain sectarian lines, mostly Śvetāmbara
and to a lesser extent Digambara. Businesses were
originally and are still to a great extent in textiles,
jewelry, precious stones, and, to a lesser degree,
pawnbroking and moneylending. However, they
have diversified greatly over the last century with
the prominent families now having taken over lead-
ership roles in the pharmacological industry. In
other parts of Tamil Nadu, such as Madurai, Tamil
Marwari Jains have been successful in the hardware
and stone-mining businesses. The degree to which
Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains see them-
selves as centered within the Tamil-speaking region
and their integration into Tamil society as a success
story has led the communities to reach out to their
ancestral communities up north. In fact, over the
last 30 years, with the rural economy in Rajasthan
failing, Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jains
based in Chennai have begun reinvesting in those
areas that their families left as economic migrants,
including in the development of temples and also,
2 Dadha, 2011.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 355
more recently, in the development of archaeological
sites and the establishment of small local museums,
as well as tourism and pilgrimage infrastructure.
The most prominent Śvetāmbara temples in
Chennai today are the old Jain Ārādhana Bhavan on
Mint Street (Sowcarpet), the small Vāsupūjya Svāmī
Śvetāmbara temple on Mathala Narayanan Street
(Mylapore), and the relatively recent Śāntinātha Jain
temple on G.N. Chetty Road (T. Nagar), while Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Digambaras patron-
ize the ornate Candraprabha (or Candraprabhu)
Nayā Jain temple, also on Mint Street, as well as the
Digambara Jain temple on Subrahmanya Mudaliar
Street in Georgetown, which was originally set up
and is still run by Tamil Jains. The temple on Chan-
drappan Street, also in Georgetown, is patronized
by Tamil Gujaratis of the Kānjī Svāmī Panth. The
community’s umbrella organization is the Sowcar-
pet-based Jain Mahā Saṅgha, which, on its letter-
head, calls itself an “organization of Sthanakwasi,
Murtipujak, Terapanthi & Digamber Jain.” Apart
from being active temple builders and sponsors of
their own communities, Tamil Marwaris and Tamil
Gujarati Jains also act as potent patrons of the bet-
ter-known, larger Tamil Jain temples throughout the
state, as well as of educational institutions, some-
times affiliated with older Tamil Jain sites, located in
rural northern Tamil Nadu. Among the Tamil Jains,
they sponsor daily ritual, festivals, renovations and
infrastructure upgrades, and the travel and resi-
dences of female mendicants mostly from Madhya
Pradesh (called sādhvīs by the Tamil Marwaris and
mātās by the Tamil Jains; in North India, sādhvī is
used only for Śvetāmbara female mendicants, while
mātā is used only for Digambara female mendi-
cants), and they have contributed substantially to
the recent flourishing of local religious institutions.
While the old temple institutions are all run by
Tamil Jains, there are bonds of patronage, reaching
back several generations, which have tied the urban
Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Jain communities
to the village elites mediated through the temple. In
fact, it is the temple and its festivals around which
meetings by representative members of both groups
are organized, bringing together men, women, and
children from both communities in worship and cel-
ebration. Tamil, Tamil Marwari, and Tamil Gujarati
Jain women compete in composing and perform-
ing songs in their respective primary languages or
having their daughters dance their respective dance
forms of bhāratanāṭyam, mārvāḍī, or garbā in the
old temple courtyards in the presence and in honor
of the visiting munis/sadhus; sādhvījis/mātājīs; and
the local paṭṭārakar (Skt. bhaṭṭāraka, usually called
Tam. maṭātipati, Skt. maṭhādipati), a semimonastic
religious leader heading an important shrine and
holding ritual, educational, economic, and informal
advisory authority. The sermons delivered by the
mostly female mendicants in Hindi, sometimes in
broken Tamil, or by the bhaṭṭārakas mostly in Tamil,
sometimes in broken Hindi, address, admonish,
advise, bore, or inspire both communities equally,
while the sermons delivered by the visiting mendi-
cants, who are mostly from Hindi-speaking areas,
appeal more directly to the Tamil Marwari and Tamil
Gujarati audiences. On these occasions, Tamil, Tamil
Marwari, and Tamil Gujarati Jains interact, convers-
ing mostly in Tamil, plan events, strike business
deals, negotiate marriages, and articulate conflicts
across the divide or within this shared space as com-
munities that come together through their religion.
While donations that do not involve interference
with the management of active Tamil Jain temples
are generally welcomed, a more contentious field is
restorations of old and dilapidated Tamil Jain tem-
ples, their reconsecration, and the establishment
of ritual routines following the Kharatara Gaccha
tradition. The oldest example for this is the Ādināth
Bhagavān Temple in the Red Hills outside Chennai.
It used to be a Tamil Digambara temple, has been
sponsored since 1890, with the legal claim on the
temple confirmed in 1935, and is now being used as a
Marwari Śvetāmbara temple. There are other, more
recent examples of less comprehensive appropria-
tion, where temples with controversial legal status
and failing networks of Tamil Jain ritual servicing
are kept active thanks to the involvement of Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati communities or due to
regular pilgrimage activity from North India.
The way in which Jain communities segregate and
connect, however, is far from homogenous. In the
religious sphere in the Tamil-speaking region, Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Śvetāmbaras have little
in common with Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati
Digambaras, even within densely networked spaces
such as the big urban centers. Due to the opportu-
nities of sponsorship and influence that they offer,
both communities are more aware of the Tamil Jains
and their centers than of each other. While the Tamil
Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Śvetāmbara communi-
ties occasionally resort to non-Jain priests (Hind./
Guj. sevaka) from their own Marwari and Gujarati
communities, Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati
Digambaras have more consistently connected with
the local networks of the Tamil Jain ritual special-
ist caste (Tam. upāttiyāyar, Skt. upādhyāya) whose
356 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
male members are responsible for the performance
and transmission of Jain liturgy and are employed by
Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Digambaras. Mar-
wari and Gujarati Jain families are attractive to Tamil
Jain families as bride takers, but for Tamil Jains, wed-
dings across this divide are as much a matter of social
mobility as they are a source of anxiety regarding sta-
tus and the loss of their daughters as key carriers of
Jain domestic culture. Weddings between Tamil and
Tamil Marwari and Tamil Gujarati Digambaras are
proportionally more frequent, and the maintenance
of religious continuity is assessed as more realistic,
with Tamil Jain women frequently taking their Tamil
Marwari or Tamil Gujarati husbands back to their
native villages for festivals. From that perspective,
the softening contours of ethnic divisions need to
be understood as being unevenly relativized by sec-
tarian distinctions and affinities.
Contemporary Tamil Jains and
Important Tamil Jain Centers
The move of Tamil Jains to urban centers over the
last two decades has been dramatic, with migrants
from the younger generation settling in the sprawl-
ing suburbs of cities like Chennai and taking up
work as teachers and in the information technology
sector. A very few, from the older generation, made
it into government service, but there are community
celebrities like C. Acit Kumār (J. Ajith Kumar) Jain,
senior principal of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s
Rajaji Vidyashram, Chennai (a prestigious coeduca-
tional school belonging to an educational trust with
roots in India’s independence struggle), who have
proven that Tamil Jains can be successful in emerg-
ing domains of business management, such as in
the lucrative educational sector, and are serving as
models for a socially aspiring younger generation.
Apart from the Marwari and Gujarati Jain Temple on
Subramaniam Street in Georgetown, which is also
frequented by Tamil Jains, temples have sprung up
on the periphery of Chennai such as the Tikampara
(Digambara) Jain kōyils (temples) in Adambakkam,
Ambattur, Kolathur, and Mogappair. The lead-
ing Tamil Jain association in Chennai is the Jaina
Iḷaiñar Maṉṟam (Jaina Youth Forum) in T. Nagar,
which publishes Tamil Jain literature and academic
works as well as the leading community journal,
Mukkuṭai (The Three Parasols), first published in
1918. The short-lived periodical called Ṭavalam (The
Banner), published in Vandavasi (Tiruvanamallai
district) and affiliated with the Tamil Jain maṭam
(Skt. maṭha), a religious, educational, and economic
center in Thirumalai (Tirunelveli district) no longer
exists, while the most recent to emerge is Jina Aṟam
(Jina Dharma), with its first issue published in 2017.
Particularly Mukkuṭai, with its illustrated reports in
color on religious and fundraising events, historio-
graphical sketches, devotional poetry, features on
leading personalities, and ads for firms run by Tamil
Jains, plays a key role in creating a contemporary
Tamil Jain community of readers and writers.
Outside of Chennai, in the districts immediately
to the southeast of the metropole – Kanchipuram,
Tiruvannamalai, and Vellore (both formerly North
Arcot); Viluppuram and Cuddalore (both formerly
South Arcot); and Thanjavur – the trend has been
urbanization, with Kanchipuram, Tindivanam,
Tiruvannamalai, Trichy, Salem, and Thanjavur, the
sites of old existing Tamil Jain centers, attracting
those who do not make the leap to Chennai. Immi-
grants to these areas seek work in small businesses
and schools. Migration is happening from widely
spread out, small to very small agricultural settle-
ments that until the late 20th century represented
the main locations of the Tamil Jain population.
These dwindling or, rather, increasingly mobile
communities are oriented around religious centers
that still remain very active, with most of them close
enough to Chennai to allow for regular and frequent
visits for family gatherings, temple events, and
sponsorship. These rural Tamil Jains have tended to
be agriculturalists, land and livestock owners. They
belong to Veḷḷāḷar high-caste non-Brahman com-
munities and self-identify in terms of caste name as
Nayiṉār, Ceṭṭiyār, Mutaliyār (the latter two designa-
tions also used by non-Jains), and, more recently,
simply as Jain. The Tamil Jains employ lower-caste
communities such as the Paṇṇaiyār to do most of
the agricultural work and impose restrictions on
them regarding access to Tamil Jain temples. Some
Jain landowners maintain that the partial eman-
cipation of those communities has contributed to
the crisis in the bonded-labor-reliant agricultural-
ist economy, which has traditionally supported the
Tamil Jains. An agricultural ethos in its modernist
form is very much alive among the Tamil Jain com-
munity today, with puranic narratives centering on
the introduction of agriculture by Ātināṭar (Skt.
Ādinātha or Ṛṣabha), the most popular Tīrthaṅkara
among Tamil Jains, merging with the Dravidian ide-
ology’s celebration of the man of the soil.
Historically, much of the scholarly literature on
Jainism in the Tamil-speaking region has taken the
form of listing and describing abandoned and, to a
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 357
lesser extent, active sites, for the purpose of heri-
tage documentation.3 The most active religious
institutions are found in Melsithamur, Thirumalai,
Thirunarungundram (also known as Tirunarun-
gondai), Karandai, Arpakkam, and Tindivanam.
Melsithamur,4 also called “Jinakāñci” or “Jinakañci”,
borrowing the name from the erstwhile flourishing
Jain district in Kanchipuram, hosts the oldest still
existing Jain maṭam in Tamil Nadu, dating back to
the 10th or 11th century. It is an institution with ritual
and informal legal authority over smaller shrines
throughout the region, headed by a maṭātipati with
the hereditary title of Laṭcumicēṉa Paṭṭārakar (Skt.
Lakṣmīsena Bhaṭṭāraka). Over more than a century,
here the role of the maṭātipati has been filled by a
layman elected by the local council and confirmed
by other maṭhas outside of Tamil Nadu, most impor-
tantly that of Kolhapur (Maharashtra). The Tamil
Jain maṭātipati has held considerable ritual author-
ity, and his historical importance in the Tamil-
speaking region encourages us to rethink the figure
of the Jain bhaṭṭāraka and to see it not as a deficient
or decadent form of monasticism, but as a norma-
tive force in its own right through which Tamil Jains
have identified themselves for more than a thou-
sand years. The current office holder, born in 1940
as Poṉ Appāṉṭairājan in Melmalaiyanur, is regarded
as the senior-most official religious representative of
the Tamil Jains. The once extensive land holdings
of the Jinakañci Maṭam have shrunk dramatically
over the centuries, and encroachment is an ongo-
ing challenge. The maṭātipati here5 functions as
caretaker of the maṭam’s property, including land,
produce, buildings, images, and manuscripts. He
oversees all ritual activities at the maṭam’s two major
shrines – the smaller rock shrine Malaianātar Kōyil
and the larger Pārcuvanātar (Pārśvanātha) Kōyil –
including the annual temple festivals, such as the
chariot (tēr) procession during makāvīrar jeyanti
(Skt. mahāvīra jayantī), and attends events all over
the Tamil Jain region, particularly consecrations of
shrines (Tam. kumpāpicēkam, Skt. kumbhābhiṣeka)
and installations (Tam. piratiṭṭai, Skt. pratiṣṭhā) of
images and temple pillars (Tam. ṭivajastampam, Skt.
dvajasthambha). He also oversees life-cycle rituals
held at various religious sites throughout the region.
The most important of these is the rite of “instruct-
ing” (Tam. upatēcam ceytal, Skt. upadeśana), which
3 e.g. Veṅkaṭacāmi, 1954; Ekambaranathan et al., 1985;
Umamaheshwari, 2017; Balbir et al., 2018.
4 Ēkāmparanātaṉ, 2009; Emmrich, forthcoming b.
involves handing over the sacred thread (Tam.
pūṇalaṇivittal) to boy children, often performed
together with an analogous rite for girl children. At
the center of both liturgies is the teaching of the
fivefold mantra (Skt. pañcanamaskāramantra).
More generally, the maṭātipati delivers sermons;
gives individual instruction in doctrine; advises
on agricultural, financial, and matrimonial mat-
ters; and helps settle local disputes, thus keeping
these conflicts within the community and avoid-
ing costly formal lawsuits. In the ritual function-
ing of the temples, he is joined by the upāttiyāyar
(Skt. upādhyāya), who usually hails from a male Jain
family lineage of priests or is trained in a maṭam
and consecrated by the maṭātipati. Tamil Jains
host lectures and teaching events in urban centers
such as Gingee and Tindivanam, which are situated
west and east of Melsithamur. The nearby Aṭināṭar
Tikampar Jain kōyils in the towns of Vizhukkam
and Koliyanur are emerging major sites of dona-
tion and worship. Such recent growth has been con-
nected to the successful establishment of adjacent
tarumatēvi (Skt. dharmadevī) and tarumatēva (Skt.
dharmadeva) shrines, continuing the long-standing
tradition and popularity that these cults of nonliber-
ated Jain female and male deities have in the Tamil-
speaking region. Another indispensable element
of Tamil Jain temple sites is the shrine to the nine
planetary deities (Tam. navakkirakam, Skt. nava­
graha), which, together with the temple tower (Tam.
kōpuram) and the temple pillar, are the characteris-
tic features of the Tamil temple ensemble. The main
Tīrthaṅkara image of Tamil Jain temples is mostly
not only Ātināṭar, but also Nēminātar (Neminātha),
and less frequently Cantiraprapā (Candraprabha or
Candraprabhu), Kuṇṭunātar (Kunthunātha), and
Varttamāṉaṉ or Varttamāṉanātar (Vardhamāna
or Mahāvīra), but the tarumatēvi and tarumatēva
shrines demand at least an equal amount of ritual
attention. Temple ritual is conducted in Sanskrit
with the hymns sung mostly by women in Tamil,
Marwari, Gujarati, and Hindi, but there is a notice-
able current trend among the Tamil Jains to develop
Tamil versions of liturgies to eventually replace San-
skrit as the ritual language.
The only other existing maṭam is the Arihantakiri
Maṭam in Thirumalai near Arani in Tiruvannamalai
district.6 It is situated just below a rocky outcrop that
5 Emmrich, forthcoming b.
6 Sastri, 1931; Umamaheshwari, 2017, 138–141; Emmrich,
forthcoming b.
358 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
hosts the Kundavai Temple on top, donated by the
10th–11th-century Chola queen that gave it its name,
and the largest rock-carved figure of Nēminātar, and
the Mahāvīra Temple at its foot. The major festival
is the public anointment ritual (Tam. apicēkam,
Skt. abhiṣeka) of Nēminātar during the fourth and
final day, called kāṇum poṅkal, of the Tamil har-
vest festival. The maṭātipati of Tirumalai, who
holds the hereditary title of Ṭavalakīrtti Paṭṭārakar
(Skt. Dhavalakīrti Bhaṭṭāraka), was installed by the
Cārukīrti Bhaṭṭāraka of Shravanabelagola in 1998.
He thereby newly constituted a paṭṭārakar seat at a
place where none is recorded to have existed before,
and revived what seem to have been strong histori-
cal ties of the religious center in Tirumalai to the
Karnataka maṭha in Shravanabelagola. The first and
current office holder, born in 1967 as Taraṇēntira
Cāstiri in Uppuvellor, and who regularly joins the
Melsithamur maṭātipati at important community
events, is a dynamic, scholarly man who, thanks
to donors mostly from Chennai, oversees a rapidly
growing institution. On its compound, it includes
a primary and secondary school running a state
curriculum, a kurukulam (Skt. gurukula) offering
instruction in Jain doctrine and ritual, and shrines
dedicated to the tarumatēvis and the ciṭṭars (Skt.
siddhas), or liberated souls that reside in the top-
most region of the world. The maṭātipati’s most
important current influence consists in the success-
ful training and placing of upāttiyāyars in temples
throughout northeastern Tamil Nadu and in culti-
vating historically close relationships between that
site and key bhaṭṭārakas in Karnataka.
Three important centers to which Tamil Jains
regularly travel for temple festivals and life-cycle
rituals are Thirunarungundram near Ulundurpet in
Villupuram district, Karandai in Thanjavur district,
and Arpakkam in Kanchipuram district. Thiruna-
rungundram (or Tirunaruṅkuṉṟam, dating back to
the 9th cent. CE) and its Appāṇtaināṭar Kōyil host
the annual naṟkāṭci (Tam. “true faith”) festival held
in February. This involves a 48-day austerity period
(Tam. viratam, Skt. vrata), a journey to the hilltop
temple, and the celebration of life-cycle rituals. The
tradition emerged about a quarter of a century ago
following tentative Śaiva claims to the site and was
possibly modeled on the famous Śaiva Sabarimala
Ayyappan (Tam. Caparimala Ayappaṉ) festival
in Kerala. Arpakkam upāttiyāyars offer life-cycle
rituals outside of major festivals, while Karandai’s
7 Ramachandran, 2002.
8 Emmrich, forthcoming c.
Kuṇṭunātar Kōyil is a popular center for annual fes-
tivals, which take place at the other big shrines too,
such as akṣayatṛtīya or jinarātrī (Tam. cinarātiri),
commemorating the fast breaking of Ātināṭar
(Apr–May), mahāvīra jayanti (Tam. makāvīrar jey­
anti [Mar–Apr]) and dīpāvalī (Tam. tīpāvali [Oct–
Nov]), celebrating the 24th Tīrthaṅkara’s birth and
liberation, respectively, and vasantapañcamī (Tam.
vacanta­pañcami [Jan–Feb]), when Tamil Jains cel-
ebrate their scriptures.
Poṉṉūr Hill near Vandavasi in Tiruvannamalai
district has a cluster of temples, both old and new,
centered on sacred sites associated with the worship
of the footprints of Eḷācāriyar, the Tamil name of the
important Digambara philosopher Kundakunda.
There is also a very active contemporary monastic
institution, known in English as the Aacharya Kund-
kund Jain Sanskruti Center. Concluding the round
of the most important active sites is the old Jain
center in Thiruparuttikundram on the outskirts of
Kanchipuram.7
It still retains much of its prestige throughout
the Tamil Jain, Tamil Marwari, and Tamil Gujarati
communities, although the interruption of the local
upāttiyāyar lineage, legal quarrels, and adminis-
tration of the site by the Archaeological Survey of
India have stunted its revitalization as a place of
worship, and ritual activities remain tentative.8 The
case of the 2008 overpainting of Pallava-era murals
in Thiruparuttikundram9 and the recent demolition
of a medieval temple in Koliyanur and the erection of
a new structure at its place in 2014 are examples
of how contemporary Tamil Jain revivalism can be
as much about destruction of historical substance
as about the recovery of community life. The min-
ing of natural stone across Tamil Nadu and the
danger that this poses to abandoned old Jain rock
sites are a cause that makes Tamil Jain communities
rally around calls for preservation. This has helped
develop a new sense of belonging and ownership of
the historical Tamil Jain landscapes farther south,
where very few Tamil Jain communities are found
these days. The Green Walks movement in Madurai
has discovered and is advertising these Jain monu-
ments as sites for cultural tourism and historical and
environmental awareness and has been enthusiasti-
cally embraced by Jains and non-Jains alike.
All popular religious centers in the northeast are
regular destinations not only for Tamil Jain, Tamil
Marwari, and Tamil Gujarati groups, but also for
9 Del Bontà, 2010.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 359
Jain pilgrims from South and North India, as well
as for non-Jain tourists. They also represent stops
on the itinerary of Digambara monks and nuns
mostly from Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Madhya
Pradesh. As with all Digambara monastic lineages,
the Tamil Jain lineage of full-fledged naked monks
was interrupted. One of the first Tamil Jains to take
initiation as a monk outside of Tamil Nadu and to
travel to his home region was Muni Cupatiracākaraṉ
(Skt. Subhadrasāgara) from Erumbur.10 The mother
of the current Tavalakīrtti Paṭṭārakar (see above)
is the well-known Āryikā Vicuttappirapā (Skt.
Viśuddhaprabhā). There are several Tamil mendi-
cants currently affiliated with Digambara centers in
the Indian states to the west and to the north, but
only a few of them have returned to Tamil Nadu.
History of Jains in the Tamil-Speaking
Region from Textual and Epigraphic
Sources
Tamil Marwari and Gujarati Jains are traditionally
part of a larger cosmopolitan Indian community
of readers, writers, and publishers in North Indian
languages. Tamil Jain literature, however, is natu-
rally more restricted to South India and the Tamil-
speaking region but reaches much farther back in
time; the earliest traces of writing in Tamil, in fact,
having been identified at Jain sites. It is therefore
through linguistic sources that the history of Jain-
ism in the Tamil-speaking region can be best traced,
and for the longest part, that history is not that of
the Tamil Marwari or Tamil Gujarati Jains but that
of the Tamil Jains. This is the case due to the his-
torical consistency of linguistic production and a
persistently high literacy rate among the Jains of
the Tamil-speaking region. The latter is particu-
larly striking among rural Tamil Jain women today,
many of whom have pursued upward social mobil-
ity as teachers in local schools. In the domestic
sphere, it is women who engage most with texts,
predominantly with liturgical literature, old and
new devotional lyrics, and in some cases medieval
puranic narratives. Domestic divinatory practices
associated with the 15th-century Śrīpurāṇam are
usually in the hands of women,11 and as the life-
cycle rite marking literacy indicates, there seems to
10 Umamaheshwari, 2017, 163–164.
11 Emmrich, forthcoming c.
12 2009.
have been among the Tamil Jain communities less
reluctance for senior men to teach girl children to
read and write than in other rural Tamil communi-
ties. Contemporary literary activity is seen in the
composition of devotional hymns, such as by the
Chennai poet Jampukumāraṉ12 or in the translation
of older Jain literature into contemporary literary
Tamil. Tamil Jains take great pride in their textual
practices, ritually associated with the reprinting
and donating of books on festive occasions (Tam.
cāstiratānam, Skt. śāstradāna); institutionally con-
nected to the manuscript holdings of their temples
and maṭams; and historically related to the fact
that some of the most cherished ethical, epic, and
poetic works that are part of the modern Tamil liter-
ary canon were authored by or are ascribed to Jains.
The importance of texts for the formation of a mod-
ern Tamil Jain identity goes back to two historical
events. The first is the initiative brought forward by
the Tamil Jain social activist Jīvapantu (Jīvabandhu)
T.S. Śrīpāl (1900–1981)13 to institutionalize on a
larger scale the public recitation of the 10th-century
epic Cīvakacintāmaṇi (Cīvaka, the Wishing Jewel).
The contemporary reemergence of Tamil Jain self-
assertiveness dates back to Jīvapantu T.S. Śrīpāl,
whose campaigns for ahiṃsā (nonharm) and the
abolition of animal sacrifice, and his struggle for the
recognition of the Tamil Jains, owe much to the ide-
ologies of the Dravidian Self-respect Movement and
to the subaltern Buddhist activities promoted by
Aiyōti Tās (1845–1914). The modernist formulation
of the medieval mass impalement of Jains by the
Śaivas in the context of the history of the Mīnākṣī
Temple of Madurai as a collective trauma of the nar-
rative, visual, and performative representation, and
its integration into Tamil Jain memory culture, also
go back to Jīvapantu T.S. Śrīpāl’s vociferous protest
against those prominent and persistent public anti-
Jain articulations by the Śaiva community. The other
(and earlier) historical event that played an impor-
tant role in the formation of contemporary Tamil
Jain historiography is the “discovery” and publica-
tion in 1887 of the Cīvakacintāmaṇi by the figure-
head of the “Tamil Renaissance,” the Śaiva scholar
U.V. Cāmināta Aiyar (1855–1942).14 At its core stands
the acknowledgment by U.V. Cāmināta Aiyar of the
importance of this epic within the Tamil Jain com-
munity, the role that individual Tamil Jains played in
13 Umamaheshwari, 2017, 240–246; Cāstiri, 2019, 9–10.
14 Monius, 2011.
360 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
his editorial retrieval of the text, and the place that
this and several other works attributed to Tamil Jain
authors came to occupy in a newly established Tamil
literary canon. These texts were appropriated by
Dravidian nationalism and also helped to formulate
Tamil Jain claims that their community has been
foundational for Tamil literary history and the Tamil
nationalist project more broadly.15 Claims to Jain
authorship include two more of the five “great Tamil
epics” (aimperuṅkāppiyam), the Cilappatikāram
(The Tale of the Anklet, maybe 5th cent. CE) and the
Vaḷaiyāpati (9th or 10th cent. CE, now lost except
for a few verses), a range of works on grammar and
poetics foundational for the development of Tamil
literature and all acknowledged by modern Tamil
literary historiographies as being authored by Jains,
as well as the gnomic work Tirukkuṟaḷ. It is thanks to
the work of Appacāmi Cakkaravartti Naiṉār (1880–
1960) as editor, translator, and popularizer of Jain
literary and philosophical works in Tamil (e.g. the
Tirukkuṟaḷ, the Nīlakēci, the Mērumantarapurāṇam,
the Samayasāra, and the Pañcāstikāyasāra); as an
academic employed within the colonial higher edu-
cational system; and as the author of the monograph
Jain Literature in Tamil16 that Tamil Jain literature
and Tamil Jainism as a whole became known out-
side Tamil literary circles and to the larger Indian
Jain public.17
Jīvapantu T.S. Śrīpāl’s activism, U.V. Cāmināta
Aiyar’s editions, and Appacāmi Cakkaravartti
Naiṉār’s translations are of the greatest importance
for our knowledge of Tamil Jain history today; for
the return of the attribution of Tamil Jain cultural
products again identified as Jain within elite Tamil
culture; and for the contemporary Tamil Jain com-
munity’s own historical self-awareness. They mark
the end of a period of Tamil Jain history spanning
approximately three hundred years, from about
the 16th to the late 19th century, about which very
little is known and about which historical research
is desperately needed. This apparent lack of sources
has led historiographers to claim that in that period,
extended by some as far back as the 14th century,
Tamil Jainism had “effectively vanished” from the
Tamil-speaking region. The evidence of Tamil Jain-
ism’s presence in many sources, be they literary,
archaeological, or ethnographic, from U.V. Cāmināta
15 Emmrich, 2011.
16 Chakravarti, 1974.
17 Emmrich, forthcoming a.
18 Taylor, 1838; Wilson, 1882; Mahalingam, 1972.
Aiyar’s times until today, proves that assumption
wrong, or at the very least forces us to ask how Tamil
Jain representation in the period under question
may have been different from its representation
before and after.
One glimpse into Tamil Jainism immediately
preceding the “Tamil Renaissance” comes from the
data collected by Tamil colonial administrators in
the Madras Presidency in the early 19th century
under the supervision of Colonel Colin Mackenzie
(1754–1821). These data contain valuable informa-
tion about Jain centers,18 such as the interaction of
the Melsithamur maṭam with the nawāb (a semi-
autonomous Muslim ruler or viceroy with links to
the Mughals) of Arcot and with the British authori-
ties, the reorientation of the maṭam’s management
toward the colonial rulers to secure support for their
temples’ hold on land, and the activities of no lon-
ger existing maṭams.19 These records also contain
popular local Jain historiographies circulating orally
in that period, some of which are still retrievable as
oral history today.20 One such narrative dating back
to Colin Mackenzie’s times and claimed by various
Tamil Jain communities as theirs, remembers a Mus-
lim king demanding a Jain wife, the opportunistic
behavior of the Brahman neighbors, the flight and
self-occultation of the Jains, and the subsequent
destruction of the Jain temples by the angered ruler.
This rather generic tale of persecution is important,
as it is testimony born by the Jains themselves and
not, like the Madurai impalements, first celebrated
by non-Jain sacred history. The identification of the
king as Muslim may give it some historical specific-
ity, making this version not older than the early 14th
century, when Muslim rulers first emerged in the
Tamil-speaking region. Before the period of Colin
Mackenzie’s survey, however, even the extant docu-
ments associated with Jain temples remain thin,
the most recent ones dating from the 16th century.
The 16th century also records the last surge in the
number of Jain donors’ inscriptions in the Tamil-
speaking region, the count dropping dramatically
from 24 in the 16th century to merely 5 in the 17th
century in a representative sample.21
The history of Melsithamur, to name the most
important site that is still active, does seem to
reach back to the 9th–, 10th–, or 11th-century sage
19 Emmrich, forthcoming b.
20 Umamaheshwari, 2017.
21 Orr, 2000, 128; based on Ekambaranathan & Sivaprakasam,
1987.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 361
Cānticākara (Śāntisāgara). He is said to have come
from Shravanabelagola and to have established the
maṭam around that time to protect texts from their
feared destruction by the Buddhists.22 Cānticākara
is also credited with having built the Pārcuvanātar
Temple in Melsithamur, replacing an older one there
dedicated to Perumāḷ (Viṣṇu). Chola period inscrip-
tions from the 12th century, however, merely indi-
cate the existence of a maṇṭapam (Skt. maṇḍapa,
a pillared pavillion), and there is no reason to
believe that a larger monastic institution existed
there at such an early stage.23 The main shrine, the
Pārcuvanātar Kōyil, emerges only in inscriptions
from the 12th century onward. A local tradition refers
to the decision by the Melsithamur Jain learned elite
to reject the Brahman Nacciṉārkkiṉiyār’s commen-
tary on the Cīvakacintāmaṇi and to ask the author
to resubmit it.24 The commentary has been dated
as having been composed around 1375,25 which
would give us a hint of the maṭam’s early history.
Another prominent local figure, Vīracēṉāccāriyār
(Vīrasenācārya) from the town of Uppuvellor, is said
to have fled to Shravanabelagola, studied there, and
returned to the Tamil-speaking region to teach.26
He is said to have founded the maṭam in Chittamur
and, the institution at that time supposedly still
being in the hands of mendicants, not paṭṭārakars,
to have begun imparting monastic initiation (Tam.
tīkkai, Skt. dīkṣā) around the early 16th century.27 No
more data are available about this center until Colin
Mackenzie’s records.
The other important event dating to the mid-16th
century, around the time of the possible founding
of the Melsithamur maṭam, is the compilation of
the Cūṭāmaṇinikaṇṭu (The Crest Jewel Glossary;
also known as Paṉṉiraṇṭunikaṇṭu, The 12[-Chap-
ter] Glossary) by Maṇṭalapuruṭar.28 This text builds
on Jain-authored glossaries (Tam. nikaṇṭus, Skt.
nigganthas) from the 9th century CE that list syn-
onyms for words arranged in specific categories, and
establishes itself as the model work of this genre in
Tamil henceforth. What is remarkable about this
work is that it represents the most recent example,
prior to the “Tamil Renaissance,” of a work emerg-
ing from a Jain scholarly environment that became
22 Mackenzie ms. 11, sec. 2; Mahalingam, 1972; Ēkāmpa­
ranātaṉ, 2009, 82.
23 Ēkāmparanātaṉ, 2009, 80–81.
24 Uma Maheshwari, 2017, 366–367.
25 Zvelebil, 1995, 169.
26 Mackenzie ms. 11, sec. 2, discussed in Ēkāmparanātaṉ,
2009, 81.
normative for Tamil language and literature across
sectarian boundaries.
An older and more hallowed lineage, however
one that also reaches only to the 14th century, can
be reconstructed around Thiruparuttikundram near
Kanchipuram, from which the Melsithamur maṭam
took over the name Jinakañci. Local memory reaches
as far back as Akaḷaṅka, a teacher who in 788 CE is
said to have been victorious in a debate initiated by
the king Sāhasatuṅga Himaśītala (identified with
the Rashtrakuta king Dantidurga) at Kanchipuram.
As a result, he turned the king into a Jain and evicted
the Buddhists.29 There is a gap of about four hundred
years between this earliest date and the appearance
of the first inscription at the main shrine of that site,
the Trailokyanātarkōvil. The inscription, dated 1166,
refers to a monastic community (Skt. ṛṣisamudāya)
and the purchase of land during the reign of the
Chola king Kulōttuṅka I.30 An inscription dat-
ing 1199, during the reign of Kulōttuṅka III, under
whom the maṇṭapam (Skt. maṇḍapa) of the tem-
ple was built, mentions an otherwise unidentified
teacher in residence named Kurukkaḷ Candrakīrti
as having secured a land grant for the temple in a
village called Aṃpi (location unknown). His name
marks the recorded beginning of a lineage located
at the site: two inscriptions on an offering stone
(Tam. palipītam; Skt. balipīṭha), on which locals still
deposit alms for the holy man,31 mention a disciple
of Candrakīrti’s named Anantavīrya Vāmaṇa, who,
on the basis of the dating of his teacher, would have
to be placed in the mid-13th century. A number of
inscriptions32 refer to a later teacher, Malliṣeṇa
Vāmana, who possibly lived in the early half of the
14th century and who also, like Candrakīrti, is still
ritually fed today. Local tradition identifies him with
the well-known author Vāmaṇamuṉivaṟ, famous for
his commentaries on Kundakunda’s works, as well as
commentaries on the Tamil text Nīlakēci and other
Tamil works such as the Mērumantarapurāṇam.
Inscriptions abound by his student Puṣpasena, who
on his own memorial stone (samādhi) calls him-
self “the bee at the lotus feet of Śrī Malliṣeṇa” (śrī
malliṣeṇapadapaṅkaja cañcarīkas).33 Two inscrip-
tions from the Vijayanagara period are particularly
27 Mackenzie ms. 12, sec. 5; Mahalingam, 1972.
28 Chakravarti, 1974, 131–132; Zvelebil, 1995, 220.
29 Ramaswami Ayyangar, 1988, 31.
30 Ramachandran, 2002, 22.
31 Ramachandran, 2002, 42.
32 Ramachandran, 2002, 43.
33 Ramachandran, 2002, 62.
362 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
detailed, mentioning his patron as “the unsurpassed
Jaina” (jainōttamaṉ) Irugappa, who was a chief min-
ister of King Bukka II from the late 14th century.
As no more names of teachers were subsequently
recorded, one may assume this site to have thrived
from the 12th to the 14th century. It is within that
period, between the 12th and 13th centuries, that we
find another surge in the numbers of Jain donors’
inscriptions throughout the Tamil-speaking region.
Twenty-eight are recorded in the 12th century and
39 in the 13th century, after which the numbers drop
over the 14th and 15th centuries until their brief
recovery in the 16th century.34
It is in this period of the rise and fall of Thirupa-
ruttikundram, and the shift of the religious center
of Tamil Jain religious authority to Melsithamur
between the 12th and 15th centuries, that we see,
particularly in the second half of this period, in
which Tamil Jain institutions located in the north-
east were sponsored by Vijayanagara queens and
generals, the composition of what remain the three
most revered texts of Tamil Jainism until today.
They include the 15th-century Śrīpurāṇam, which
is still used today in divination rites. It represents a
version of Jinasena and Guṇabhadra’s 9th-century
CE Sanskrit Mahāpurāṇa featuring the hagiogra-
phies of the Tīrthaṅkaras, subsequently rendered
into Manipravalam (a medieval to early modern
Tamil-Sanskrit literary idiom) by an unknown Tamil
author from Perumandur, and possibly mediated
by the 10th-century Kannada version of the text by
Cāvuṇḍarāya. The second work is the 14th-century
Mērumantarapūrāṇam (The Purāṇa of Mēru and
Mantara) by Vāmaṇamuṉivaṟ (1375–1400) of Thiru-
paruttikundram. This is an epic narrative on the life
of the two gaṇadharas (chief disciples) of the 13th
Tīrthankara, Vimala, which has remained the main
Tamil reference for Jain doctrine and scholastic
terminology. The third text is the 13th-century (or
later) Aruṅkalacceppu (The Treasure Casket), a col-
lection of gnomic verses of advice for laypeople. It is
based on Samantabhadra’s 7th-century CE Sanskrit
Ratnakaraṇḍakaśrāvakacāra (The Jewel Box of Lay
Conduct).
The 13th century thus seems to have been a pro-
ductive period for literature. Also dated to this cen-
tury, and of the same genre as the Aruṅkalacceppu,
is Tirumuṉaippāṭiyār’s Aṟaneṟiccāram (The Essence
of the Way of Virtue). Three more important Tamil
34 Orr, 2000, 128.
35 Zvelebil, 1995, 169.
Jain works emerged at that time which have not
remained that present in Tamil Jain textual practice,
but are among the most recent Jain works that were
adopted and considered normative across religious
sectarian lines. The first is the influential early 13th-
century grammatical work Naṉṉūl (The Good Book)
by Pavaṇantimuni, which deals with the phonology,
script, euphony, word classification, and morphol-
ogy of Tamil. In terms of authority, it is till today
regarded only second to the oldest Tamil grammar,
the Tolkāppiyam, the early versions of which may
date back to the 1st century BCE. Two more works
from this period became normative for Tamil litera-
ture for centuries to come. The second text is the late
13th- or early 14th-century Agapporuḷviḷakkam (The
Elucidation of the Subject of Akam) by Nāṟkavirāca
Nampi (or Nampi Nainār) from Puliangudi, which
classifies and regulates the composition of erotic
verse (akam). The third text is the probably late 12th-
or early 13th-century grammar by Kuṇavīrapaṇṭitar,
the Nēminātam, named after the main deity of
Teṉmayilāpuri (now Mylapore, Chennai), an impor-
tant Tamil Jain religious center at that time. It is also
called Ciṉṉūl (The Short Book), a moniker that may
have paired it with Naṉṉūl (The Good Book).
Moving farther back in time, before the emer-
gence of Thiruparuttikundram, the period reaching
from about the 7th to the 10th century CE saw the
composition of those works to which the mostly
non-Jain 19th-century “Tamil Renaissance” reached
back. The aforementioned Cīvakacintāmani, recog-
nized as the epitome of classical Tamil poetry and
the symbol of modern Tamil Jain resurgence, has
been dated to the 10th century CE.35 The epic tale in
verse, which builds on earlier versions in Sanskrit
following Vādībhasiṃha’s Kṣattracūḍāmaṇi, from
around the same time, which is in turn based
on Guṇabhadra’s 9th-century CE Sanskrit
Uttarapurāṇa, tells of the exploits of the hero
Cīvaka. These include serial marriages (hence its
other well-known title, Maṇanūl [The Book of Mar-
riages]), winning back the kingdom lost by his father,
Cīvaka’s world renunciation, his life as a Jain ascetic,
and his eventual liberation.36 The poem Cūḻāmaṇi
(The Crest Jewel) by Tōlāmoḻittēvar is likely to fall in
the same century, as may the now lost Vaḷaiyāpati, of
which only a few scattered stanzas are preserved in
later works. So may also the Yacōtarakāviyam (The
Poem about Yaścōtara); its date, however, is even less
36 trans. Ryan & Vijayavenugopal, 2006–2018; Ryan, 1985;
Vijayalakshmy, 1981a; Ryan, 1985; Monius, 2012.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 363
certain, with some scholars suggesting as late a date
as the 13th century.37
More securely placed in the latter half of the 10th
century CE38 is the anonymous Nīlakēci, the story of
the conversion to Jainism of a female demon (pēy),
called Nīlakēci (“The Blue-Haired”), and of her feats
in proving non-Jain teachers wrong and thwarting
the Buddhists.39 This text is still popular today even
beyond the Tamil-speaking region.
Koṅkuvēlir’s Peruṅkatai (The Great Story),40 also
known as Utayaṇaṉkatai (or simply Katai), also
dates to the 9th–10th centuries CE.41 It is a Tamil
version of the possibly 6th-century CE Bṛhatkathā
centering on the life of King Udayana of Kauśāmbī,
and was also influential for the composition of the
Cīvakacintāmaṇi.
This period was the earliest recorded productive
time of kāppiyam (kāvya) storytelling in Tamil, and
also the first period in which comprehensive trans-
lation efforts from Sanskrit texts and Sanskrit poet-
ics, including those of satire,42 are detectable. It may
not be surprising that also dated to the late 10th and
early 11th centuries is one of the most normative
works on Tamil prosody, the Yāpparuṅkalam, and its
condensed version, the Yāpparuṅkalakkārikai, both
by Amitacākarar, and possibly based on a Sanskrit
model, as well as its anonymous commentary, the
Yāpparuṅkalavirutti. Strikingly, it is in verse 1 of the
Yāpparuṅkalakkārikai that the language Tamil is first
celebrated as a beautiful woman. The various trans-
lation processes that originate in this period still
require more scholarly attention. A.E. Monius, for
example, has pointed to the fact that Jain literature
from this period onward, and in distinction from the
literatures of the Buddhists, Śaivas, and Vaiṣṇavas,
refuses to identify the Sanskrit poetic locales with
Tamil ones and instead expands Tamil literary land-
scape idioms to reformulate North Indian sites.43
Slightly earlier, the 9th century CE saw the
composition of the two oldest Tamil nikaṇṭus, the
Tivākaram by Tivākaraṉ (or Maṇṭalapuruṭar) and
the Piṅkaḷanikaṇṭu (also Piṅkalatai) attributed
to Tivākaraṉ’s son Piṅkaḷa.44 The 8th century CE
saw, relative to earlier inscriptions, an increased
37 Zvelebil, 1995, 279.
38 Zvelebil, 1995, 495.
39 Umamaheshwari, 2018.
40 Vijayalakshmy, 1981b.
41 Zvelebil, 1995, 551–552.
42 Monius, 2012.
43 Monius, forthcoming a.
44 Cokkaliṅkam, 1975.
participation of women, both mendicant and lay, in
the production of donative records,45 with both gifts
and their implicit merit dedicated to mendicants
and laypeople alike, indicating a deep integration of
the Jains into Tamil Jain society.46 Jain sources date
to this century the expulsion of the Buddhists from
Kanchipuram and beyond, a legendary feat attrib-
uted to Akalaṅka from Karandai.47 The number of
inscriptions by Jain donors in the Tamil-speaking
region peaks in this century, only to gently and
then dramatically fall in the subsequent centuries,
with only temporary and short phases of recovery.48
The Jains did not regain a position of prominence
until the resurgence of Tamil Jain public life and the
transformation of inscriptional practices and media
in the 20th century.
Much scholarly importance has been given to the
7th and 8th centuries CE due to the role that Jains
played in the Śaiva bhakti literature of that period,
particularly the hymns by Appar and Campantar in
the Tēvāram. Here the Jains were discredited and
demonized in terms of ethics, hygiene, intellect,
and language competence, and their defeat was
celebrated.49 As A.E. Monius has shown, these
sources are “less about the Jains as historical figures
on the Tamil landscape, and far more about the
changing fortunes, attitudes, and practices of Tamil-
speaking Śaivas themselves.”50 The 8th-century CE
surge in Jain inscriptional evidence, confirming
Xuanzang’s 7th-century CE testimony of the Jains
dominating Kanchipuram, and Śaiva religious rhet-
oric directed at those who were obviously perceived
as their greatest competitors, certainly go hand in
hand. The drop in Jain inscriptional activity parallel
to the emergence of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava bhakti lit-
erature in the subsequent centuries; the branding of
the Jains as the other as part of a process of merging
Tamil and Śaiva identity;51 the gradual and irrevers-
ible rededication of old Jain sacred sites, such as, to
give a few examples, those in Pāṭalika (present-day
Thirupathiripuliyur, being a part of Cuddalore),
Teṉmayilāpuri (present-day Mylapore, Chennai),
and Kanchipuram; and the dramatic changes in the
balance of religious patronage all speak of a major
45 Orr, 1998.
46 Orr, 2000, 130–132.
47 Ayyangar, 1922, 31.
48 Orr, 2000, 128.
49 Peterson, 1998; Vēluppiḷḷai, 2002; Ulrich, 2007.
50 Monius, forthcoming b.
51 Peterson, 1998.
364 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
historical reconfiguration of the religious landscape
of the Tamil-speaking region. Whether the Śaiva lit-
erary narratives of struggle as the dominant form of
social interaction with the Jains all through this cru-
cial period should be taken at face value is another
question. In fact, the claim that the rise of Śaivism
“drove the Jainas back to their hill abodes”52 has been
questioned by more recent scholarship.53 Until more
recent centuries, monastic caves are unlikely to have
been ever fully abandoned and barely ever served
as permanent settlements for entire communities.
What is also clear is that Śaiva anti-Jain rhetoric
continued, with minor flows and ebbs of intensity,
right up to the 17th and 18th centuries, with the Śaiva
saints Cāmināta Tēcikar and Civañāṉa Cuvāmikaḷ
warning against the purportedly nefarious influence
of Jain-authored literature.54 The image of the dark,
fierce, and, ironically, hirsute Jain bogeyman found
in Śaiva iconography has endured in popular Tamil
Śaiva imagination right up to the present day.
In the earliest stratum of what may be litera-
ture emerging from a Tamil Jain environment, we
encounter the Nālaṭiyār (Great Quatrains; also
Nālaṭināṉūṟu, Four Hundred Quatrains), dated to
the 7th century CE. This is a collection of gnomic
poetry by various anonymous authors identified as
Jain that details the categories of aṟam (dharma),
poruḷ (artha), and kāmam (kāma), three of the four
goals to which humans should aspire according to
classical South Asian philosophy. It was compiled
in Madurai by the undated redactor Patumaṉār,
whose commentary is said to be lost.55 The gnomic
didactic collection Paḻamoḻi or Paḻamoḻināṉūṟu
(Four Hundred [Stanzas with] Proverbs) ascribed to
Muṉṟuṟaiyaraiyaṉ (or Muṉṟuṟaiyaraiyaṉār)56 may
date to the same period. Although it represents one
of the most difficult cases of dating in Tamil literary
history, we can be certain that one of the earliest lit-
erary texts with substantial Jain references is the epic
Cilappatikāram (The Story of the Anklet),57 ascribed
to the Kerala royal figure Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ (“The Prince-
Ascetic”). Its presumed dates range from the 2nd to
the 8th century CE, and are most likely to be fixed in
the mid-5th century CE.58 The powerful female pro-
tagonist Kaṇṇaki, due to the unjust execution of her
wayward husband by the king, burns down the city
52 Champakalakshmi, 2011, 371.
53 Owen, forthcoming.
54 Zvelebil, 1975, 22–23; 1992, 147.
55 Zvelebil, 1995, 464.
56 Zvelebil, 1995, 509.
57 trans. Parthasarathy, 1993.
of Madurai and stands at the center of the narrative;
but it is the Jain nun Kavunti Aṭikaḷ, acting as travel
companion and adviser to the couple on their way
to the royal capital, who emerges as the most impor-
tant unambiguously positive figure of the poem.
It is possible that a faint echo of the same Jain advi-
sory voice as found in both the Cilappatikāram and,
more closely related in terms of genre, the Nālaṭiyār
can be perceived in the Tirukkuṟaḷ (The Sacred
Kuṟaḷ [kuṟaḷ being the type of verse employed in the
work]), which is assumed to date to the 5th or 6th
century CE.59 This is the best-known collection of
Tamil gnomic verses. Like the later Nālaṭiyār, it deals
with aṟam, poruḷ, and kāmam.60 Contemporary Jains
claim the author to be Eḷācāriyar, the Tamil name for
Kundakunda, whose dates have been suggested to
range anywhere between the 1st and 8th centuries
CE. Outside the Jain fold, the Tirukkuṟaḷ’s author’s
name is known as Tiruvaḷḷuvar. The invocation of
ātipakavan (ādibhagavan, identified with the Jina
Ātinātar) at the beginning of the text and the stress
on nonviolence are frequent references invoked to
strengthen the argument in favor of a Jain inflec-
tion of the work. Since neither the title of the work
nor the identity of its author is historically secured,
the text has been claimed by various religious com-
munities. In the early 20th century the Dravidian
nationalist movement established it as a Tamil
“national” text. These claims by non-Jains to what is
likely to be a text that originated in a milieu in which
Jainism was an influential force betray the same tra-
jectory of other texts mentioned earlier, as texts for
which there is arguably Jain authorship have been
appropriated across divides of religion and textual
transmission due to their strong aesthetic or ethi-
cal appeal and a very low sectarian profile.61 In fact,
the Tirukkuṟaḷ’s secularist readings by the Dravidian
movement have made it possible to claim it as a non-
religious text, just as modernist readings of Jainism
as a secular tradition have tended to emphasize the
ethical, technical, and aesthetic aspect of Jain texts
and to minimize their soteriological and devotional
import. The Tamil Jain literary horizon ends here. An
association of Jainism with the Caṅkam literature,
which extends farther back in time, is even more
difficult to prove than that with the latter works.62
58 Zvelebil, 1995, 145–146.
59 Zvelebil, 1995, 669.
60 Zvelebil, 1995, 669.
61 Takahashi, 2009.
62 Vijayalakshmy, 1990, 199‒202.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 365
But the claim that the location of the literary asso-
ciations (caṅkams) traditionally affiliated with that
literature is Madurai, an important Jain center dur-
ing that period, may allow us to assume a certain
historical proximity.
Early History from Epigraphical and
Archaeological Sources
Datable Tamil Jain linguistic evidence before the
5th century CE and reaching back to the 2nd or
3rd century BCE, which is when we find the earli-
est traces of Jainism in the Tamil-speaking region,
is almost entirely epigraphical and archaeological.
Consequentially, our knowledge of the first 700 or
800 years of Jainism in the Tamil-speaking region
is the scantiest, the most speculative, and the most
controversial. In fact, it is to the 5th century CE
that much of the shape of Tamil Jainism, as we
still find it today, can be traced back. In contrast
to the Kannada-speaking region, but in common
with other parts of India, inscriptions in the Tamil
region include relatively few references to the feed-
ing of monks or the celebration of ritual fasting
unto death (Tam. vaṭakkiṟuttal, Skt. sallekhanā).
Instead, in contrast to most other regions in South
Asia, we see a considerable involvement in donative
activity of persons with a high religious standing
(paṭārar, aṭikaḻ), as well as male (kuravaṉ, āciriyaṉ)
and female teachers (kuratti), particularly in the
southern sites around Madurai, Kanniyakumari,
and Tirunelveli.63 While inscriptions before the 8th
century CE are shorter “label” inscriptions next to
images or rock caves, from as early as the 8th cen-
tury CE, inscriptional evidence points toward a rich
ritual culture shared and developed side by side
with Buddhist, Śaiva, and Vaiṣṇava communities.
The inscriptional use of the term paḷḷi before the
5th century CE mostly referred to rock shelters with
drip ledges to redirect rain water, water receptacles,
post holes, stairs, and stone beds for wandering
ascetics, where teaching was offered and donations
were accepted, and which in contemporary Tamil
still means “school.” From the 5th or 6th century CE,
the semantic field of palli began to include temples
that from the 8th century CE onward housed images
63 Orr, 1999, 256–257.
64 Orr, 1999, 254–255; Uma Maheshwari, 2009.
65 such as Ekambaranathan, 2009; Champakalakshmi, 2008.
66 Orr, 1999; Davis, 1998; Owen, 2016.
and involved worship (arccaṉai) of Tīrthaṅkaras
(addressed as paṭārar, “venerable”), saints (particu-
larly Puṣpadanta), and female iyakkis (Skt. yakṣīs;
addressed as piṭāri, ancestor), mainly Ampikā
(Ambikā) and Patumāvati (Padmāvatī). In Tamil
Jainism, these female deities acquired a ritual sta-
tus semi-independent of the Tīrthaṅkaras.64 Recent
research has shown that these developments did
not occur as part of assimilative borrowing strate-
gies on part of the Jains, as maintained by an earlier
generation of scholars,65 but represent both paral-
lel and intertwined developments, in which Jain
bhakti played a critical role.66 Key in this context is
L.M. Owen’s call for a reassessment of the Tamil Jain
rock shelters as places that defy the categories cave
or temple. She calls particularly for a reevaluation of
the practices traditionally associated with the latter,
arguing that they create an ensemble that emerges
out of environmental concerns and multidenomi-
national negotiations.67
The period from the 4th to the 6th century CE,
infamously known as “the Kalabhra Interregnum,”68
is among the most poorly documented in the region’s
history. The combination of the paucity of data and
the negative references to it in later, particularly Brah-
manical inscriptions, has led scholars to assume that
the period was dominated by non-Tamil-speaking
intruders who patronized Jain and Buddhist insti-
tutions. Of the works associated with Jainism, only
the Cilappatikāram and the Tirukkuṟaḷ are candi-
dates for having been composed in that period and,
if so, probably toward its tail end. Some of the later
Tamil Jain institutions may indeed also date back
to the 5th century CE. This prominently includes
the former maṭam in Pāṭalika (see above) where
Eḷācāriyar is supposed to have been active, where the
Lōkavipākam (Skt. Lokavibhāga; dated 458 CE) was
copied by Sarvanandin and which was headed by the
bhakti saint Appar before he converted from Jain-
ism to Śaivism. It is also the period attributed to the
teachers Pūjyapāda, the Digambara commentator
on Umāsvāti’s Tattvārthādhigama Sūtra, and of his
student Vajranandi. The 5th century CE further saw
the founding of the Tirāviḍa (or Tirāmiḷa) Caṅkam
(Drāviḍa Saṅgha) in Madurai around 470 CE.69 This
marked the establishment of an independent Tamil
Jain monastic lineage, but its presence does not seem
67 Owen, 2016, 424, 438–439; forthcoming.
68 Arunachalan, 1979.
69 Upadhye, 1935, xxi; Dundas, 2002, 122–123.
366 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region
to have conflicted with the divisions of the Deva,
Nandi, Siṃha, and Sena Saṅghas established in the
Kannada-speaking region and current in Tamil Jain-
ism too. Later commentators assigned the Drāviḍa
Saṅgha a place within the Nandi Saṅgha, which,
together with the Cēna Caṅkam (Sena Saṅgha)
and the Vīra Kaṇam (Vīra Gaṇa), founded in Thiru­
narungundram by Guṇabhadra in the 9th century
CE, remained the dominant group in the region.70
Rather than assuming a golden era of Tamil Jainism
in “the Kalabhra Interregnum,” historiographical
evidence suggests an efflorescence around the end
of this period, coinciding, in fact, with the emer-
gence of Tamil Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava bhakti in the 6th
and 7th centuries CE and leading to a climax in the
number of Jain inscriptions in the 8th century CE.
This suggests that one read the 5th to 8th centuries
CE not as the beginning of the end of Jainism in the
Tamil-speaking region, but as the beginning of a
new phase of sustained development, including, if
contrasted with the earliest surviving literary pro-
duction, a heightened sense of identity.
The period before the 4th century CE, the so-
called Caṅkam period, saw a high concentration
of Jain sites in the south around Madurai. This dra-
matically changed after the 4th century CE, when
activity around Madurai declined and the focus
shifted along trade routes to the area west around
Theni, south around present-day Tirunelveli, and
northeast to the Pudukkottai region. The latter con-
solidated as the new Tamil Jain core region between
the 10th and 13th centuries including north toward
Kanchipuram,71 beginning and continuing the gen-
eral historical drift to the northeast, which eventu-
ally led to the present-day settlement pattern. The
period leading up to the 5th century CE saw a few
important religious centers, like Puhār (present-day
Poompuhar) and Kāvērippūmpaṭṭiṇam (present-
day Kaveripattinam), and maybe starting in the
5th century CE Pāṭalika and Teṉmayilāpuri (see
above), emerge close to the coastal Tamil Jain cen-
ters. Nevertheless, Jain centers have remained
mostly inland since the early Madurai period, sug-
gesting for the pre-5th-century CE period a reli-
ance on trade and agriculture and a chiefly urban
orientation.72 The Tamil Jain association with the
70 Champakalakshmi, 2011, 365, 377.
71 for maps covering the earlier periods, see Champakalak-
shmi, 2011, 396–398.
72 Champakalakshmi, 2011, 359–360; Hanlon, 2018.
73 Mahadevan, 2003.
74 Hanlon, 2018, 84–85.
Pandya-dynasty capital Madurai is the longest in the
history of the community, lasting eight centuries.
Evidence is found in what the inscriptions identify
as caves (karaṇṭai, muḻākai), settlements (uṟai), and
sleeping places (paḷḷi), on elevated locations near
cliffs at a distance from the urban center and, as doc-
umented in the earliest evidence of a Tamil Brahmi
inscription at Samana Hills near Madurai, reaching
as far back as the 2nd century BCE.73 More recent
scholarship has tentatively suggested pushing back
the date to the 4th century BCE,74 with proposals
for a date for the possible origins of South Indian
Brahmi reaching as far back as the 5th century BCE
remaining contested.75 The other early important
center, from which come the second largest cluster
of inscriptions from about the 2nd century BCE, is
the Cera-dynasty capital of Karur. Donors recorded
in these early inscriptions range from the artisanal
to the mercantile to the aristocratic milieu. They
bear Prakrit names in the earlier records and Tamil
names in the later records.
Standard hagiographical accounts of initial mis-
sion and migration that abound in the Jain tradi-
tion, and in the case of the Tamil-speaking region
feature Viśākācārya as the first teacher reaching
out from Karnataka, are late. Nor are they from the
Tamil-speaking region. An example is the norma-
tive record from Shravanabelagola dated 600 CE.76
Although inscriptional evidence, for example from
Sittanavasal, does indicate early exchanges with the
Kannada-speaking region,77 the earliest Jain records
in Karnataka only go back to the 5th-century CE
Kadamba-dynasty inscriptions.78 This weakens the
historicity of claims to Karnataka as the provenance
of Tamil Jainism. Alternative to the model of an
inland spread79 is that of coastal migration based
on inscriptions from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.80
This hypothesis in turn requires an extrapola-
tion of those data for the Tamil-speaking region
where coastal evidence for that period is lacking
so far. It may be more likely that north-south-west
exchanges occurred in less linear ways than either
of the proposed models suggests. Both models, in
which the merchant replaces the monastic as pro-
tagonist, share with hagiographies topoi of linear
migration-driven narratives in which the “foreign”
75 Rajan & Kumar, 2013; Rajan, 2015.
76 Desai, 1957, 25–27.
77 Mahalingam, 1967, 254–260.
78 Chatterjee, 1994.
79 Champakalakshmi, 2011, 375.
80 Dundas, 2002, 113; Hanlon, 2013; 2018, 83.
 Jainism in the Tamil-Speaking Region 367
Jain community “arrives” in a space defined by
the absence of Jainism, and the unspecified locals
“receive.” In order to understand local develop-
ments of reciprocity better, rather than merely far-
ther pushing back the timeline, future scholarship
may need to explore avenues that make it possible
to consider the possibility that Tamils themselves
may from early on have been more active in reaching
out to Jain communities outside the Tamil-speaking
region. Jainism may have from very early on emerged
in and been perceived of as more indigenous to
the Tamil-speaking region than these models seem
to suggest.
Conclusion
While post-17th-century Jainism in the Tamil-
speaking region plays a negligible role in the discus-
sions of Tamil religious history, the weight of Tamil
Jainism in discussions of the emergence of religious
traditions that are most strongly associated with
Tamil religiosity today increases the farther back in
time one goes. The major issues at stake are two: first,
the place and status of the Jains as insiders or outsid-
ers regarding a perceived Tamil space and, second,
the agency or lack thereof attributed to the Jains in
the formation of their own religious practices and
in that of others. In the issue of identity, opinions
have been divided. On the one hand, scholars have
stressed histories of immigration and continuing
ties to the north; elite and minority status; a sup-
posed predominance of asceticism, scholasticism,
and ethics; and standing in opposition to other reli-
gious groups, particularly Brahmans (Champaka­
lakshmi). On the other hand, other scholars have
deemphasized interreligious struggle; they have
instead focused on specificities shared with other
Tamil religious communities, and highlighted these
continuities by contrasting them to those of non-
Tamil Jains (Orr), on the status of discourses con-
ducive to othering (Peterson, Emmrich), or on the
role of the Jains in the formation of what is Tamil
in the first place (Chakravarti, Vijayalakshmi, Uma-
maheshwari). In the second question, that of who
influenced whom, the Tamil Jains have been viewed
either as imposing ethical, ascetic, and aesthetic
norms onto what may be the uncivilized native to
some (Chakravarti) or the indomitable Dravidian
to others (Zvelebil) or as essentially deficient, and
receiving; borrowing; and imitating “folk,” vedic,
Śākta, or bhakti language, theology, and ritual. In
some cases, the Tamil Jains have been seen as doing
both at different periods in history but as ultimately
being too rigid to adapt successfully enough to per-
sist as a historical force relevant for regional identity
building (Champakalakshmi). While the discus-
sions of otherness versus sameness have to deal
with the problem of dehistoricizing the Tamil Jains,
who are assumed to be always already either one or
the other, those discussions surrounding the direc-
tionality of influence are confronted with the effect
that imparting agency to specific historical subjects
to the detriment of others at varying points in time
may help create hierarchies of greater or lesser
authenticity. The trajectories of these discussions
in the scholarly literature are more closely linked
to questions of caste identity and regional national-
ism than has been previously acknowledged. They
are expressions of a still insufficient understand-
ing of the relations between Jain and non-Jain idi-
oms, articulations, practices, and communities in
the Tamil-speaking region and an indication of the
challenges that this only very tentatively emerging
academic field faces.
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