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South Indian Inscriptions |
RELIGION pitriyajña (offerings to manes), bhutayajña (offerings to creatures), manushyayajña (reception to guests) and brahmayajña (study of one’s Vēdic texts). It was believed that the regular performance of such rites by pious Brāhmanas conduced to the well-being of the State.1 We find that Purānic Hinduism was making a much greater headway in the earlier period. The doctrine of bhakti (devotion) preached in the Bhagavadgitā appealed more to the popular mind than the cult of the sacrifice. Again, the teaching of that sacred work that all worship, whatever may be its object, ultimately reaches the same Supreme Being, led to religious eclecticism. Of the several gods of the Hindu pantheon, Vishnu, Siva, Kārttikēya and Āditya attained a great importance in his period. The Traikutakas were Vaishnavas. They describe themselves as Bhagavat-pāda-karmakara (servants of the feet of Bhagavat) in their grants2 and as paramavaishnava (fervent devotees of Vishnu) on their coins. Again, the Hariśchandriya king Bhōgaśakti believed that there was no pre-eminent god except Vasudeva (Vihsnu), who was the cause of the creation, preservation and de struction of the universe. He built a temple dedicated to that god under the name of Bhōgēśvara in the merchant-town of Jayapura, and granted some villages and assigned certain taxes for the worship of the deity, the repairs of the temple and the maintenance of a charitable feeding house attached to it. The Yātrā festival of the god was to con tinue for a full fortnight in the month of Mārgaśīrsha. The management of the temple was entrusted to a committee of five or ten members elected by the merchants of the town. In return for this, the merchants living there enjoyed certain immunities and exemptions.3
Śiva was also an equally popular god–perhaps more so with the aborigines and foreigners who embraced Hinduism. The cult of this god received even a greater royal patronage than that of Vishnu. In the absence of the official records of the Ābhīras we have no definite information about their religious inclinations, but judging by their names Śivadatta and Īśvarasēna, they seem to have been devotees of Śiva. The same appears to be true of their feudatories ruling in Khandesh and Central Gujarat ; for, their names Svāmidāsa, Rudradāsa and Īśvararata unmistakably point to their predilection for the Saiva faith. The Katachchuris or Early Kalachuris also were adherents of Śaivism. All the three Early Kalachuri Kings, Krishnarāja, Śankaragana and Buddharāja, are described in the Kalachuri grants as paramamāhēśvara, i.e., fervent devotees of Mahēśvara (Śiva). That they belonged to the Pāśupata sect of Śaivism is shown by the description of Krishinaraja as devoted to Pasupata from his very birth.4 Anantamahāyī, the queen of Buddharāja, is specifically mentioned as a follower of the Pāśupata sect.5 The Dūtaka of the Ābhōna plates bore the name Pāśupata itself.6 All this is a clear indication of the influence the Pasupatas exercised in the court of the Early Kalachuris. The Early Kalachuris must have erected splendid temples for the worship of their ishta-dēvatā, but none have been discovered so far. The magnificent temple of Śiva, how ever, carved out of a living rock, now known as Elephanta near the island of Bombay, probably belongs to their age. There had been a considerable difference of opinion about the age of the Elephanta caves. Burgess placed them about 800 A.C., 7 while Hiranand Sastri thought that the sculptures therein were, in all probability, wrought in the Gupta __________________________ 1Inscriptions of this period generally mention bali (offerings to creatures), charu (offerings to manes),
vaiśvadēva (offerings to gods) and atithi (reception of guests). See, e.g., No. 21, 1. 21.
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