Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/482

JAIN ghee (clarified butter) or jaggery (crude sugar), etc., from any but those of their own caste. They are defiled by entering a Pariah village, and have to purify themselves by bathing and assuming a new thread. The usual caste affix is Nainar, but a few, generally strangers from other districts, are called Rao, Chetti, Dās, or Mudaliyar. At Pillapālaiyam, a suburb of Conjeeveram in the Chingleput district, is a Jain temple of considerable artistic beauty. It is noted by Sir M. E. Grant Duff* that this is "left unfinished, as it would seem, by the original builders, and adapted later to the Shivite worship. Now it is abandoned by all its worshippers, but on its front stands the census number 9-A —emblematic of the new order of things." Concerning the Jains of the South Arcot district, Mr. W. Francis writes † that "there is no doubt that in ancient days the Jain faith was powerful in this district. The Periya Purānam says that there was once a Jain monastery and college at Pātaliputra, the old name for the modern Tirupāpuliyūr, and remains of Jain images and sculptures are comparatively common in the district. The influence of the religion doubtless waned in consequence of the great Saivite revival, which took place in the early centuries of the present era, and the Periya Purānam gives a story in connection therewith, which is of local interest. It says that the Saivite poet-saint Appar was at one time a student in the Jain college at Pātaliputra, but was converted to Saivism in consequence of the prayers of his sister, who was a devotee of the deity in the temple at Tiruvādi near Panruti. The local king was a Jain, and was at first enraged with Appar