Impalement

One of the favored means of execution
that seems to have been particularly
prevalent in ancient southern India. To
impale someone is to kill them by piercing them with a sharp stake.
The most stunning instance is
reported to have taken place in the city
of Madurai, where 8,000 Jain ascetics
were impaled by one of the kings in the
Pandya dynasty, after the latter had
renounced Jainism to become a Shaiva,
that is, a devotee (bhakta) of Shiva. A
tradition persists that the ultimate
responsibility for this can be traced to
the Nayanar saint Sambandar, who had
converted the king and whose surviving
poetry shows a deep animus for the
Jains. If this report is true, it also indicates one of the rare cases of religious
persecution in Hindu India, which on
the whole has been remarkably tolerant
of differing ways of religious life.
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Impalement
Depictions of this mass impalement can
be seen in murals painted at the
Minakshi temple in Madurai—whose
construction far postdates the alleged
event—as well as in popular art of different kinds.