13 Persecution

The emergence of the orthoprax consensus reported by Jayanta and confirmed by other evidence, in which Vaidikas, Vaiṣṇavas, and Śaivas were seen by others and themselves as equipolent aspects of a single loosely defined faith, the juridical view that all religions other than those considered criminal or subversive should be accepted by the state, and the evidence of royal patronage extended to religious traditions other than those to which monarchs claimed to be especially devoted suggest that there was indeed a high degree of official tolerance of religious diversity to be found in the various states of early mediaeval India. But the evidence presented above also shows that this tolerance was not innate to the individual traditions that had been absorbed, however incompletely, into this consensus.

    1. Bānskherā plate of Harṣa, ad 628: Epigraphia Indica 4:29.
    1. Epigraphia Indica 14:13.
    1. Sanderson 2009a, pp. 105, 118–120.

The Vaidikas, as we have seen, had a strictly exclusivist view that, if it could have found the support of willing monarchs, would have driven all competitors for royal patronage from the field(5); and we have seen that Śaiva ideologues for their part, while claiming to support the Vaidika tradition within an inclusive Śaiva-Vaidika socio-religious order, nonetheless show in their scriptures and learned commentaries an uncompromising faith in the otherness and superiority of Śaivism and the marked inferiority of the Vaidika system, which they saw as merely ‘mundane religion’ (laukiko dharmaḥ).130

    1. See, e.g., describing the ideal Śaiva Sthāpaka, Devyāmata f. 1v3 [2.20ab]: ‘With no attachment to the mundane religion, devoted [only] to the religion of Śiva’ (virakto laukike dharme śivadharmānurañjitaḥ).

The Buddhists and Jainas likewise stood in clear opposition to the ‘Hindu’ traditions, even though Buddhist kings at least have professed in their inscriptions their commitment to the preservation of the Vaidika socio-religious order; 131 and the Śaivas, Vaiṣṇavas, and Vaidikas have been unanimous in their condemnation of these two heterodox faiths. In this at least they could agree.

    1. See Sanderson 2009a, pp. 115–117, for the epigraphical evidence of this commitment.

Consequently, it was always a possibility that the peaceful co-existence of these competing traditions might be upset, if a royal patron or charismatic religious figure found himself eager and able, for whatever reason – political, economic, or perhaps even simple religious conviction – not merely to favour one tradition at the expense of others, but even to persecute whatever tradition he was inclined to suppress, or at least punish anyone who dared to raise a voice against the dominant religious consensus of the region and period. Consider the strident tone of the following declaration in an inscription of ad 1036 recording a grant of land made by Jayasiṁha II, the Cālukya ruler of Kalyāṇa, for the support of the temple of Śiva Pañcaliṅgeśvara, to Lakulīśvara, evidently in his capacity as the Lākula incumbent of this sacred site: 132

    1. Epigraphia Carnatica 7 Sh 126, p. 175.

I, a fire of destruction to disputants [of other faiths], shall place my foot in the presence of the king’s council on the head of any who claims that either of these is false: the God Śiva, whose feet merit the worship of all men, and the religion proclaimed in the three [Vedas], in which the system of the caste classes and disciplines has been established in its proper hierarchy.

Consider also the following passage from an authoritative South Indian Saiddhāntika Śaiva treatise of the twelfth century, which tells the Śaivas that they may kill without sin anyone who attacks their faith: 133

Even if he kills those who revile Śiva, the Mantras of Śiva, and his Gurus, he does not thereby infringe the rules of his post-initiatory discipline. There is no fault in killing those who attack [our] deities, sacred fire, and teachers.

Nor do our historical sources lack accounts of persecutions, pogroms, or sim ple vandalism directed against the religious other. Some may be fictions or at least exaggerated. But some are well attested and by their mere existence they proclaim that the Indians of our period were not adherents of the view that the religions around them were eirenic by nature.

Buddhist sources, from the Kashmirian Vibhāṣā of the second century to the East Indian Mañjuśrīyamūlakalpa of the eighth, identify as the first major perse cutor of their religion Puṣyamitra Śuṅga of the second century bc, the brahmin general who was believed to have re-established the pre-eminence of Brahmanism after bringing the pro-Buddhist Maurya dynasty to an end. According to these works he burned the Buddhist Sūtras, demolished Stūpas and monasteries, and killed many Buddhist monks, from Magadha to Jālandhara.134

Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese Buddhist scholar monk, who spent about fifteen years in Central Asia and India, reports that the Hephthalite Hun Mihirakula, who ruled in Kashmir early in the sixth century, destroyed many Buddhist foundations in Gandhāra, having resolved to extinguish Buddhism.135

    1. Trilocanaśiva, Prāyaścittasamuccaya, p. 16.
    1. For a review of these accounts see Lamotte 1958, pp. 424–431.
    1. Beal 1884, vol. 1, pp. 167–172.

He was evidently Śaiva in allegiance, since on his coins he had the bull and trident and the legend jayatu vr̥ṣa jayatu vr̥ṣadhvaja ‘Victory to the Bull! Victory to
[Śiva,] who has the Bull as his emblem!’,136 and, according to Kalhaṇa, established
a Liṅga of Śiva incorporating his name (Mihireśvara) in the capital.137 It should
be noted, however, that Kalhaṇa says nothing of persecution of the Buddhists
in particular but notes only that before the close of his life he had been a pitiless
monster responsible for countless deaths.138

    1. Stein 1979 on 1.289. To laud the bull (vr̥ṣaḥ) would be surprising if the intended meaning were the bull that is Śiva’s mount, but not if the word is intended in its figurative meaning, namely dharmaḥ or sukr̥tam ‘the virtuous actions [prescribed by the Veda].’ For this meaning of vr̥ṣaḥ see, for example, Amarasiṁha, Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana 1.4.25b (sukr̥taṁ vr̥ṣaḥ), 3.3.220 (sukr̥te vr̥ṣabhe vr̥ṣaḥ); Halāyudha, Abhidhānaratnamālā 1.125cd (dharmaḥ puṇyaṁ vr̥ṣaḥ śreyaḥ sukr̥taṁ ca samaṁ smr̥tam); Manusmr̥ti 816a (vr̥ṣo hi bhagavān dharmas . . .); and the Gwalior Museum Stone Inscription of Pataṅgaśambhu (Mirashi 1962), l. 15, vr̥ṣaikaniṣṭho ’pi jitasmaro ’pi yaḥ śaṇkaro ’bhūd bhuvi ko ’py apūrvvaḥ, concerning the Śaiva ascetic Vyomaśambhu: ‘He was in the world an extraordinary new Śiva, since he too was vr̥ṣaikaniṣṭhaḥ (‘devoted solely to pious observance’; in Śiva’s case ‘riding only on the Bull’) and he too was jitasmaraḥ (‘one who had defeated sensual urges’; in Śiva’s case ‘the defeater of the Love god Kāmadeva’). This is also the meaning of vr̥ṣaḥ in the title Vr̥ṣasārasaṁgraha, one of the works of the Śivadharma corpus (see, e.g., Sanderson 2014, p. 2), i.e., ‘Summary of the Essentials of the [Śiva]dharma’.
    1. Rājataraṅgiṇī 1.306.
    1. Rājataraṅgiṇī 1.291–293, 361.

Xuanzang also reports the persecution of the Buddhists by the East Indian ruler Śaśāṇka (c. 603–619/20). He tells us that this king attacked the religion of Buddha, dispersed the Saṅgha, cut down the Bodhi tree, damaged the rock nearby that bore the Buddha’s footprints, and ordered that a Buddha image there should be replaced by an image of Śiva.139 He too was a devout worshipper of this deity (paramamāheśvaraḥ),140 and his gold coins show Śiva reclining on his bull.141

    1. Beal 1884, vol. 2, pp. 91, 118, and 121.
  • 140.Sircar 1983, Supplement, no. 1, ll. 4–5.
    1. Sircar 1983, no. 5.

The religious history of the kings of India up to the reign of Gopāla (r. c. 750– 775), the first king of the Pāla dynasty, given in the guise of a prophecy and added to the Buddhist Tantric Mañjuśrīyamūlakalpa, probably not long after Gopāla’s reign,142 reports that in Vārāṇasī a king of Gauḍa called Soma, perhaps the Sāmanta-Mahārāja Soma/Somadatta, the feudatory of Śaśāṇka recorded in an inscription of c. 620,143 destroyed Buddha images; had the Buddhist scriptures burned; obliterated Buddhist monasteries, assembly grounds, and Stūpas; and blocked their endowments.144

In the twelfth or thirteenth century an inscription from the royal town of Vodāmayūtā in Haryana praises a Saiddhāntika Śaiva ascetic from Aṇahi lapāṭaka called Varmaśiva who had been appointed head of the Śaiva Maṭha in Vodāmayūtā by the minister of the great-grandfather of the present ruler, relating that when he had gone to the Deccan as a boy he had seen an image installed by the Buddhists and in his fury had by some mysterious means succeeded in carrying it off to a great distance.145

The Pallava Mahendravarman I (c. 610–630), originally a Jaina, is thought to have persecuted the Śaivas until he was converted to Śaivism by the Tamil poet-saint Appar.146 Appar declares himself a convert from Jainism and his poetry, like that of his near contemporary Campantar, is full of vituperation both against his former co-religionists and the Buddhists.147 After his conversion from Jainism to Śaivism the Pāṇḍya king of Madurai is said to have had 8,000 Jainas impaled in revenge for an attempt to kill his Śaiva Guru Campantar.148 Whatever the degree of accuracy of this grotesque claim it is significant that this massacre is depicted in relief around the enclosure of the tank of the temple of Mīnākṣisund areśvara in Madurai and celebrated to this day in its festivals.149

    1. Matsunaga 1985, p. 893.
    1. Sircar 1983, no. 4.
  • 144.Mañjuśrīyamūlakalpa 53.657–687, especially 657–660.
    1. Epigraphia Indica 3, no. 1, l. 8.
    1. Stein 1994, p. 78.
    1. Viswanathan Peterson 1991, passim.
  • 148.Cf. vanmikanathan 1985, pp. 239–262, stating in all seriousness that in fact the Jainas impaled themselves.
    1. Sastri 1964, p. 110.

An inscription of c. 1200 at Ablūr, a Jaina stronghold in the Dharwar district of Karnataka,150 reports a conflict between Jainas and Śaivas towards the end of the twelfth century that culminated in the destruction of a Jaina temple and its image of the Jina and the construction in its place of the temple of Śiva Vīrasomanātha (/Someśvara) by the Śaiva zealot Ekāntada-Rāmayya; and inscriptions at Shravana Belgola and other places in Karṇāṭaka record that in 1368 the Jainas appealed successfully to the king of Vijayanagar for protection from persecution at the hands of Vaiṣṇavas.151

There is also an inscription of ad 1184 from Talikoti in the Mudehihal Taluk of Bijapur District on a pillar near the gateway of the fort, which records that the Gaṇas of the temple of Vīra-Bayseśvara established the glory of the god Śiva with supreme valour by destroying the Buddhist and Jaina religions, vanquishing the adherents of the rival faiths at many places near and far, demolishing Jaina temples, and installing Liṅgas of Śiva.152 Nor was this kind of sectarian hatred limited to the south. In 1174, Ajayadeva, the Śaiva king of Gujarat who founded Ajmer, is said to have begun his reign with a severe persecution of the Jainas.153

    1. Epigraphia Indica 5, no. 25, E.
    1. Rice 1909, pp. 113–114 and 207–208.
    1. South Indian Inscriptions 15:56.
    1. Guérinot 1908, no. 11.

There is also evidence of hostility between Śaivas and Vaiṣṇavas. An inscription of 1160 at Tirukkaḍaiyūr rules that devotees of Śiva (Māheśvaras) associated with the temple there would forfeit their property to the temple if they mixed freely with Vaiṣṇavas.154 The South Indian Vaiṣṇava Yāmuna (c. 966/7 to 1038) is uncompromising in his view that the Śaiva faith is outside the pale of valid religion155 and that, against appearances, orthoprax Vaidika criticism of inner non-Vaidika practice applies only to Śaivism and not also to the Vaiṣṇava Pañcarātra; 156 and this view was not moderated by the later Vaiṣṇavas of southern India, who held firmly to the position that the Mantramārgic Śaivas and the Pāśupatas were infidels (avaidikāḥ, pāṣaṇḍinaḥ) the very sight of whom pollutes.157

    1. Sastri 1984, p. 645.
    1. Āgamaprāmāṇya, pp. 91–101.

Then there is the Śrīvaiṣṇava hagiographical tradition of works such as the Divyasūricarita of Garuḍavāhana and the Yatirājavaibhava of Vaṭuka Nampi, according to which their teacher Rāmānuja had to flee because of persecution by the fanatically Śaiva Coḷa emperor, finding refuge in Karṇāṭaka, where he converted the Jaina Hoysaḷa king Biṭṭideva to Vaiṣṇavism,158 and the tradition of the Divyasūricarita that the same king, or Kulottuṅga II (r. 1133–1150), according to his court poet Oṭṭakūttan, had an image of Viṣṇu removed from the front of the shrine of Śiva Naṭarāja in Cidambaram and thrown into the sea.159 Whatever the truth of this claim, it was strongly believed.160

    1. Āgamaprāmāṇya, pp. 156–158.
    1. See, e.g., the Pañcarātrarakṣā of Vedāntadeśika (1268/9–1369/70), p. 27.
  • 158 Sastri 1984, pp. 295–296 and 308.
    1. Sastri 1984: pp. 300 and 644–645.
  • 160.Finally, in 1539 Acyutarāya of Vijayanagara, a Vaiṣṇava like all the post-Saṅgama kings of this dy nasty, responded to this belief by founding the present shrine of Viṣṇu Govindarāja within the precincts of the temple, right beside the Citsabhā, the Śaivas’ holy of holies, ordaining that it should be worshipped according to the ritual of the Vaikhānasas (Younger 1995, pp. 111–112).

Only accounts of religious persecution or killing of non-Buddhists by Buddhists are lacking in the Indian sources known to me.161

    1. This is not the case in Tibet. In his Blue Annals (tr. Roerich 1995, p. 53) Gzhon nu dpal relates that the Buddhist monk Lha lung dpal gyi rdo rje assassinated Glang dar ma, the last king of the Yarlung dynasty, c. ad 842, to put an end to his persecution of Buddhism. For a colourful and no doubt fictionalized account of the assassination, see Bsod nams rgyal tshan’s Rgyal rabs gsal ba’i me long (fourteenth century), tr. by Sørensen (1994), pp. 431–435. I merely cite the tradition. For there are grounds for doubting both Glang dar ma’s hostility to Buddhism and his assassination; see Yamaguchi 1996.
    1. See, e.g., Mañjuśrīyamūlakalpa 50, prose before v. 1: ‘This [Mantra of the] Wrathful King [Yamāntaka] should certainly be employed (prayoktavyaḥ) against evil rulers and any persons that do harm to the teaching (duṣṭarājñāṁ śāsanāpakāriṇāṁ ca sattvānāṁ). . .’; ‘to protect the teaching of the Buddhas, to secure the longevity of the sacred texts (dharma-dhātu-cira-sthity-artham), to block all wicked rulers, to punish those who harm any one of the three Jewels (ratnatrayāpakāriṇāṁ)[, namely images of the Buddha, the sacred texts of Buddhism, and the community of monks]. . .’ The use of the Mantra of the Buddhist deity Black Yamāri to bring about the death of the target is taught at the end of the 4th Paṭala of the Kr̥ṣṇayamāritantra. See also Vajrabhairavatantra, at the end of its 2nd Kalpa, f. 5r–v: ‘He should make efforts to kill (māraṇīyāḥ prayatnena) or remove (athavā sthānacālanam) those who are intent on reviling [our] Ācāryas (ācārya-nindana-parāḥ), who attack the Mahāyāna (mahāyāna-pradūṣakāḥ), and who mock those who are versed in the Mantras, rituals, and their applications (mantra-tantra-prayoga-jñān hāsyaṁ kurvanti).’

Their aggression, as far as I can tell at present, was limited in India to the provision of Mantras to be used to kill the enemies of Buddhism; 162 to narratives of the forcible humiliation of the non-Buddhist deities, particularly Śiva or Bhairava and his consort; and to the canonization of these narratives in the iconography of their Tantric deities, who tread triumphant on the prostrate bodies of their Śaiva rivals, and wear their flayed skin as garments and their bones as Kāpālika ornaments.163

    1. See, e.g., Iyanaga 1985; Sanderson 2009a, pp. 155–156, 172–174.