Vira Chola (A.D. 927-977) seems first to have checked their victorious career, and Ari Vara Deva, another Chola king (1004), to have completed their destruction. He also boasts of having carried his victorious standard to the Nerbudda, and to have been a benefactor to Chillambaram, the then famed temple of his race.
This was the last great effort of the early triarchy; after this the rise of the Bellalas in Mysore, and the revival of the Chalukyas in central India, seem to have checked them to such an extent, that they never regained a perfect independence, though at times wealthy and powerful and capable of embarking in the most splendid architectural undertakings.[355]
Although, politically, these three states always remained distinct, and generally antagonistic, the people belonged to the same race. Their architecture is different from any other found in India, but united in itself, and has gone through a process of gradual change from the earliest times at which we become acquainted with it, until we lose sight of it altogether in the last century. This change is invariably for the worse, the earlier specimens being in all instances the most perfect, and the degree of degradation forming, as mentioned above, a tolerably exact chronometric scale, by which we may measure the age of the buildings.
Buddhism, as before hinted, does not seem to have ever gained a footing of much importance among any of the Dravidian races of India, and as early as the 7th century the few votaries of Buddha that existed in the south of India were finally expelled.[356] So completely was it extirpated that I do not know of one single Buddhist monument south of the Kistnah, except the tope at Amravati described above, and am inclined very much to doubt if any really important ones ever existed.
The Jaina religion, on the contrary, continued to nourish at Conjeveram and in the Mysore, and seems to have succeeded Buddhism in these places, and to have attracted to itself whatever tendency there may have been towards the doctrines of Buddhism on the part of the southern people. Though influential from their intelligence, the Jains never formed more than a small numerical fraction of the people among whom they were located.
The Hindu religion, which thus became supreme, is now commonly designated the Brahmanical, in order to distinguish it from the earlier Vedic religion, which, however, never seems to have been known in the south. The two sects into which it is divided consist of the worshippers of Siva and of Vishnu, and are now quite distinct and almost antagonistic; but both are now so overloaded with absurd fables and monstrous superstitions, that it is very difficult to ascertain what they really are or ever were. Nor are we yet in a position to speak confidently of their origin.
Recent discoveries in Assyria seem, however, to point to that country as the origin of much that we find underlying the local colouring of the Vaishnava faith. Garuda, the eagle-headed Vahana, and companion of Vishnu, seems identical with the figure now so familiar to us in Assyrian sculpture, probably representing Ormazd. The fish-god of the Assyrians, Dagon, prefigures the “Fish-Avatar,” or incarnation of Vishnu. The man-lion is not more familiar to us in Assyria than in India, and tradition generally points to the West for the other figures scarcely so easily recognised—more especially Bali, whose name alone is an index to his origin; and Maha Assura, who, by a singular inversion, is a man with a bull’s head,[357] instead of a bull with a man’s head, as he is always figured in his native land. It is worthy of remark that the ninth Avatar of Vishnu is always Buddha himself, thus pointing to a connexion between these two extremes of Indian faith; and we are told by inscriptions of the 14th century that there was then no appreciable difference between the Jains and Vaishnavas.[358] Indeed, as pointed out in the introduction, it seems impossible to avoid considering these three faiths as three stages of one superstition of a native race—Buddhism being the oldest and purest; Jainism a faith of similar origin, but overlaid with local superstitions; and Vishnuism a third form, suited to the capacity of the natives of India in modern times, and to compete with the fashionable worship of Siva.
Both these religions have borrowed an immense amount of nomenclature from the more abstract religions of the Aryan races, and both profess to venerate the Vedas and other scriptures in the Sanscrit language. Indeed it is all but impossible that the intellectual superiority of that race should not make itself felt on the inferior tribes, but it is most important always to bear in mind that the Sanscrit-speaking Aryan was a stranger in India. It cannot indeed be too often repeated that all that is intellectually great in that country—all, indeed, which is written—belongs to them; but all that is built—all, indeed, which is artistic—belongs to other races, who were either aboriginal or immigrated into India at earlier or subsequent periods, and from other sources than those which supplied the Aryan stock.
There does not seem to be any essential difference either in plan or form between the Saiva and Vaishnava temples in the south of India. It is only by observing the images or emblems worshipped, or by reading the stories represented in the numerous sculptures with which a temple is adorned, that we find out the god to whom it is dedicated. Whoever he may be, the temples consist almost invariably of the four following parts, arranged in various manners, as afterwards to be explained, but differing in themselves only according to the age in which they were executed:—
1. The principal part, the actual temple itself, is called the Vimana. It is always square in plan, and surmounted by a pyramidal roof of one or more storeys; it contains the cell in which the image of the god or his emblem is placed.