Madhava, Vidyaranya, Sringeri, and Kulke

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 5/14/2000 2:28:10 PM Central Daylight Time,
vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM writes:

> If however, as others have
>  argued, the medieval Indian did not see the invading forces from outside as
>  "Muslim", in the 19th century sense of the term, one should wonder in what
>  way Vidyaranya supposedly created a defence against Islam.

I am not clear about what is meant by the above. Are we to understand that
the invading forces were simply seen as aliens and not as followers of a
different religion, Islam, with negative impact on Hindu institutions? In
this connection, the following may be of interest.

"Whatever modern historians rationalizing about medieval Indian happenings
might say, we have contemporary epigraphic evidence to let us into the
feelings of the Hindus against the Muslims: "The times were Tulukkan times;
the devadAna lands of the gods were taxed with kuDimai; the temple worship,
however, had to be conducted without any reduction; the uzavu or cultivation
of the temple lands were (sic) done by turns by the tenants of the village;
at this juncture kampaNa uDaiyAr came (on his southern campaign), destroyed
the Tulukkan, established orderly government throughout the country and
appointed many chiefs (nAyakkamAr) for inspection and supervision in order
that the worship in all temples might be revived regularly as of old."
(History of Sri Vaishnavism in the Tamil Country by N. Jegadeesan, pp.
270-271) The ARE inscription reference is 64 of 1916.

turukkar or tulukkar originally meant Turks (as used by kampan2) but later
came to mean Muslims in general. The word tulukkan is thus related to Skt.
turuSka. Interestingly, Tapasyananda's translation of the prologue of
Sankaravijaya has the following:

"It may be that this poetical work of Navakalidasa (modern Kalidasa), though
artistic, lofty and meritorious, and though viewed with approval by cultured
and scholarly men and holy personages, none-the-less meets with carping
criticism at the hands of perverse scholars and evil-minded poets, just as
the cow, a noble animal, meets with slaughter at the hands of barbarians
(Turushkas)"

Don't we see a similarity in attitude towards the tulukkar/turuSkas shared by
the Tamil inscription and Sankaravijaya?

Regards
S. Palaniappan