Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/356

 3 o8 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. among the Dravidian races generally as it did in northern and western India ; yet, in the 7th century, when Hiuen Tsiang visited Kanchipuram, most probably when Narasimhavarman I. was the Pallava sovereign, he reckoned "some hundred of sangharamas with ten thousand priests " in the Dravida country, all belonging to the Sthavira school of the Mahayana, with eighty Hindu temples and many Jaina heretics. 1 In Malakuta or the Pandya country he reports from hearsay that the monasteries were mostly ruinous, whilst Jains were numerous ; and for the Chola province, which he probably passed through, he makes a like statement. Like their temples at Negapattam, Buddhist monasteries would mostly be of brick, and when the sect disappeared, whether from persecution as tradition asserts or through absorption into Vaishnava or other sects, their buildings would be pulled down or altered for other purposes. The Jaina religion long continued to flourish at Conjivaram and in Mysore; but, though influential from their intelligence, the Jains never formed more than a small numerical fraction of the people among whom they were located. The Hindu religion, which was probably always supreme in the Dravidian districts, now commonly designated the Brahmanical, is divided into the worshippers of Siva and Vishnu, which are quite distinct and almost antagonistic ; but both are so overloaded with absurd fables and monstrous superstitions that it is very difficult to ascertain what they really are or ever were. Nor are we yet in a position to speak confidently of their origin. Both these religions have borrowed an immense amount of nomenclature from the more abstract religions of the Aryan races, and both profess to venerate the Vedas and other scriptures in the Sanskrit language. Indeed it is all but impossible that the intellectual superiority of that race should not make itself felt on the inferior tribes, but it is most important always to bear in mind that the Sanskrit-speaking Aryan was a stranger in India. It cannot indeed be too often repeated that all that is intellectually great in that country all, indeed, which is written belongs to them ; but all that is built all, indeed, which is artistic belongs to other races, who were either aboriginal or immigrated into India at earlier or subsequent periods, and from other sources than those which supplied the Aryan stock. There does not seem to be any essential difference either in plan or form between the Saiva and Vaishnava temples in the 1 Beal, ' Buddhist Records,' vol. ii. p. 229.