Impalement of the Jains in Madurai

According to one version of the legend, the Pandyan ruler, who was a Jain, once suffered from high fever. As part of a conspiracy against the Jains by Sambandar, the queen and a minister, Sambandar announced his intention to cure the king. The Jain monks opposed this, arguing that a Brahmin from the Chola country should not be trusted. The Jains challenged Sambandar to a debate, and declared that they would become his slaves if defeated. Sambandar rejected the condition about slavery, and proposed that the Jains be impaled if defeated. He defeated the Jains in the ensuing debate, and the Shaivite devotees impaled the defeated Jains. Some Jains converted to Shaivism to escape the impalement.[1]

In another version, the condition about the losers' impalement was put forward by Shiva (instead of Sambandar).[1] Yet another version states that Sambandar requested the Jains to become Shaivites after defeating them in a debate. However, the Jains refused the offer and voluntarily impaled themselves.[1]

The most extensive version of the legend occurs in Sekkilar's 12th century text Periya Puranam.[2] According to this version, the Jains themselves proposed that they be impaled if defeated by Sambandar.[1] The legend goes like this: the Pandyan king had come under the influence of Jain monks living around the hills of Madurai. This perturbed the queen Mangaiarkkarasi (a former Chola princess) and the minister Kulachirai, who remained staunch Shaivites. The two invited Sambandar to Madurai to counter the Jain monks. The Jains set fire to Sambandar's dwelling, but Sambandar transferred the fire to the king's body in form of a fever. The Jains unsuccessfully tried to cure the king's fever with peacock feathers and mantras. Sambandar then cured the king by applying sacred ash to his body and chanting the Om Namah Shivaya mantra. The Jains then challenged Sambandar to a series of contests, vowing to kill themselves if defeated. In the fire contest, two manuscripts, containing Jain and Shaivite hymns respectively, were thrown into fire. The Jain manuscript burned, while the Shaivite manuscript remained unscathed. In the water contest, the Jain manuscript was carried away by the river, while the Shaivite manuscript came back to the shore undamaged. Finally, Sambandar miraculously cured the king's hunched back, transforming him into a handsome man. The king converted to Shaivism, and the Jains chose to die by impalement on stakes.[3]

Ottakoothar's Takkayakapparani portrays Sambandar as an incarnation of the war god Murugan (Skanda), born on the earth to exterminate the Jains. In this version, Sambandar defeated the Jains in a war-like contest. At his instigation, the Pandyan king ordered the Jains to be impaled on stakes. Takkayakapparani describes this as a "sweet tale" narrated by the goddess Sarasvati to Murugan's mother Parvati.[4]

The Thiruvilayadal Puranam similarly states that the king Kunpandyan ordered the killing of 8,000 Jains after his conversion to Shaivism.[5]

The victory of Sambandar over the Jain monks came to be celebrated in some Shaivite temples,[1] including the annual festival at the Meenakshi temple.[6] The impalement of Jains is depicted on the wall frescoes of the Golden Lily Tank of the Meenakshi temple.[7][8] The stone carvings at the Thiruvedagam Shaivite temple also depict the events from the legend.[9]

Scholars question whether this story is a fiction created in the 11th-century, or reflects an actual massacre.[10] Although Sambandar prominently features in the various versions of the legend, his writings do not mention the story.[1] Other contemporary writings in Tamil or other languages do not make mention of the legend. A number of 9th and 10th century Pandyan inscriptions mention the important events from the reigns of the preceding Pandyan kings since the 7th century. However, the alleged massacre of the Jains is not mentioned in any of these inscriptions.[11]

The Jain records do not mention the legend.[11][12] Even after the alleged massacre, the Jains continued to be concentrated in Madurai during the 8th and the 9th centuries. The Jain authors in Madurai composed several works during this period, including Sendan Divakaram (a Tamil dictionary of Divakara), Neminatham, Vachchamalai and two Tamil grammars by Gunavira Pandita. The Jain authors have not accused Shaivites of any massacre.[8]

Thus, there is no contemporary historical record of an actual massacre having taken place.[6] The legend is first mentioned in the writings of the 11th century Shaivite scholar Nambiyandar Nambi.[1] Subsequently, several versions of the legend appeared in Shaivite texts, such as Sekkilar's Periya Puranam, Ottakoothar's Takkayakapparani and Thiruvilayadal Puranam.[6]

The Pandyan king mentioned in the legend (variously called "Kun Pandya" or "Sundara Pandya"[7]) is identified as the 7th century ruler Arikesari Maravarman.[9] Thus, the first mention of the legend dates nearly 500 years after the event supposedly took place. The Meenakshi temple frescoes depicting the event were created only in the 17th century, around a thousand years after the incident.[8]

For all these reasons, a number of scholars doubt the historicity of the incident. Ashim Kumar Roy, in his book A History of the Jainas, concludes that the story was made up by the Saivites to prove their dominance. According to him, such stories of destruction of one sect by another sect were a common feature of the contemporary Tamil literature, and were used as a way to prove the superiority of one sect over the other. There are stories about a Jain king of Kanchi persecuting the Buddhists in a similar way.[8] Similarly, parallel mythical stories in 11th and 12th-century texts allege persecution of Shaiva Nayanar saints by Jains.[13] On similar grounds, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri argues that the story is "little more than an unpleasant legend and cannot be treated as history".[14]

Paul Dundas writes that the story represents the abandonment of Madurai by Jains for economic reasons or the gradual loss of their political influence. He mentions that alternatively, the massacre is "essentially mythical": the Jains in the Shaivite legend represent the demonic forces while the impalement stakes represent the yupa (the stake of wood used in the Vedic sacrifices).[12] John E. Cort supports this view, stating that "the legend (at some point in the tradition the number of Jains who were impaled got fixed at eight thousand) might well be a representation of the triumph of Agamic Shaivism's triumph over Jain asceticism".[6]

• Tamil Jain