ge of its early progress is
defective. According to Jain tradition there was a severe famine in
northern India about 200 years after Mahavira's death and the patriarch
Bhadrabahu led a band of the faithful to the south[273]. In the seventh
century A.D. we know from various records of the reign of Harsha and
from the Chinese pilgrim Hsuean Chuang that it was nourishing in Vaisali
and Bengal and also as far south as Conjeevaram. It also made
considerable progress in the southern Maratha country under the Calukya
dynasty of Vatapi, in the modern district of Bijapur (500-750) and under
the Rashtrakuta sovereigns of the Deccan. Amoghavarsha of this line
(815-877) patronized the Digambaras and in his old age abdicated and
became an ascetic. The names of notable Digambara leaders like Jinasena
and Gunabhadra dating from this period are preserved and Jainism must in
some districts have become the dominant religion. Bijjala who usurped
the Calukya throne (1156-1167) was a Jain and the Hoysala kings of
Mysore, though themselves Vaishnavas, protected the religion.
Inscriptions[274] appear to attest the presence of Jainism at Girnar in
the first century A.D. and subsequently Gujarat became a model Jain
state after the conversion of King Kumarapala about 1160.

Such success naturally incurred the enmity of the Brahmans and there is
more evidence of systematic persecution directed against the Jains than
against the Buddhists. The Cola kings who ruled in the south-east of the
Madras Presidency were jealous worshippers of Siva and the Jains
suffered severely at their hands in the eleventh century and also under
the Pandya kings of the extreme south. King Sundara of the latter
dynasty is said to have impaled 8000 of them and pictures on the walls
of the great temple at Madura represent their tortures. A little later
(1174) Ajayadeva, a Saiva king of Gujarat, is said to have raged against
them with equal fury. The rise of the Lingayats in the Deccan must also
have had an unfavourable effect on their numbers. But in the fourteenth
century greater tolerance prevailed, perhaps in consequence of the
common danger from Islam. Inscriptions found at Sravana Belgola and
other places[275] narrate an interesting event which occurred in 1368.
The Jains appealed to the king of Vijayanagar for protection from
persecution and he effected a public reconciliation between them and the
Vaishnavas, holding the hands of both leaders in his own and declaring