It has been surmised from the various references in the Tamil literature that Jainism was quite common in Tamil Nadu in the period 5th to 11th century.
Jainism is not mentioned in the Sangam literature (4th century AD), but mention of the people professing Jainism is found in the two Tamil epics Silappadikaram and Manimekhali. Both these epics belong to the 6th or 7th century AD.
Manimekhali is a Buddhist work and refers to the Jainas as Ni(r) granthas. It gives a reasonably good exposition of the Jaina religious philosophy. But naturally, being a Buddhist work refuts it . Silappadikaram is the story of a wife's devotion to her husband. It mentions Uraiyur - a Chola capital, as a centre of Jainism. Both the classics relate that the Ni(r) granthas lived outside the town in their cool cloisters, the walls of which were surrounded by small flower gardens.
They also has monasteries for nuns. This description of the Jaina monastries leads one to doubt its avthenticity, for, the Jainas, unlike the Buddhists, do not favour living in monasteries. Also since the Jainas os South India were Digambaras, there should not have been any nuns among them, to say nothing of there being monasteries for them.
Another Tamil work, the pattinapalai, speaks of Jaina and Buddhist temples being in one quarter of the city of Pugar, while in another quarter the Brahamanas with plaited hair performed sacrifices are raised volumes of smoke.
These references show that the number of Jains in Tamil Nadu was sufficiently large to be noticed in the popular literature of the period. One cannot avoid the suspicion, however, that there was a tendency on the part of the writers to mix up the Jains and Buddhists.
But Hiuen Tsang who was in Kanchi in the middle of the 7th century also reported that he saw numerous Nirgranthas at the place and since he is not likely to have confused between the Buddhist and the Nirgranthas, it is certain that that the Jain population of Tamil Nadu was quite large.
The Jaina population of Tamil Nadu was apparently larger in the 8th and 9th century than in the 7th century, for in the latter period there are very few Jaina inscriptions.
Most of the inscriptions in Tamil (about 80 or so) belong to the 8th and the 9th centuries, and these have been found mainly in the Madurai-Tirunelveli area. (In the Salem district also there was a jain temple or religious place in Tagdur (Dharmapuri) in Tamil Nadu in the 9th century. Thereafter there was perhaps a slow reduction in the Jaina population.
Many large and small Jaina temples still survive in Tamil Nadu. Two of these are important Jain centers even today. One is at Tirumalaipuram, and the other is at Tiruparuttikunram. The latter is a suburb of Conjeeverm, about three kilometers from the centre town, and is in fact still called Jaina-Kanci. The presiding deity here is Vardhamana who is also styled Trailokyanathasvami. The temple is one of the biggest in the taluk.
It is adorned with artistic splendour, and it has a large number of found at this place it appers that it was built by the Chola emperors Rajendra I (c. 1014-44) and Kulottunga I (c.1070 1120), and added to by Rajaraja III (c. 1216-46). Later additions were made by the Vijayanagar emperors Bukka II (in 1387-88) and Krishna Deva Raya (in 1518). There are some remarkable murals on the temple. These date from the 16th to the 18th century.
The fact that this large and beautiful Jaina temple in the heart of the Tamil country was being adorned even in the 18th century proves that a sufficently numerous and prosperous Jaina community eisted in that part of the country till then. Otherwise the temple could not have been maintained.
What happened to the Jainas of the Tamil Nadu after that? The possibillty is that most of the richer sections of the Jaina population got slowly absorbed in the dominant Shaiva and Vaishnava community surrounding them, and the poorer section took to farming. In fact most of the 50,000 indegenous Jaina who exists in Tamil Nadu today are farmers, and a majority of them live in the North Arcot district. It is Perhaps the lack of many rich people among them that has made the Jainas inconspicuous in Tamil Nadu. It also possible that their proportion on the total population is less than it was a thousand years ago when they started building the numerous temples still seen all over the place.
One story goes that there was a sudden reduction on the number of Jainas specially in the Madurai area in the 7th century. The story is found in the Shaivite books. It starts with the story of the Shaiva saint Gnanasambandha (end of the 7th century) as given in the Periyapuranam (A.D. 1150.)
There was a Pandya king of Madu-rai. He was hunch backed. The boy saint Gnanasambandha cured him of his infirmity and the grateful king embraced Shaiva religion. This emboldended the Shaiva population of the city who challenged the local Jainas to prove the superiority of their religion. The wager was that each sect would throw a palm-leaf manuscript script would of its sacred text in the river, and the party whose text lose would be annihilated by the other party. The Jaina text was washed away, but the shaiva text floated against the current. the 8,000 Jains of Mudurai was then killed by implaement by the shaivas.
This alleged incident is proved by the evidence of a work composed almost 500 years later and also by the evidence of some frescces on the walls of the Golden Lily Tank of the Minakshi temple (17th century) recorded 1,000 years later.
The story is not found in any Jaina source and the Jainas evidently know nothing about it; and so do not accuse the Shaivas of this massacre. The Hindu Historians on the other hand are at pains to prove the absudity of the story by such arguments as that (I) the Jainas would never enter into a wager where if they won they would have to kill human beings, (2) the king would not permit 8,000 of his inocent subjects to be killed;(3) the Jaina learned men continued to compose importent works on grammer and lexicography in Madurai itself even after the alleged incident. Among