Appendix 4 - The Kalamukha sect

In Chapter XIII, p. 350, we have referred to the important Kalamukha sect and its influence in the Mysore country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Kalamukhas were influential also in the Cola country from about the tenth century A. D.; and the relevant evidence is summarized by Prof. Nilakanta Sastri in his Colas, Vol. II (part I), p. 494. A matha of the Kalamukhas existed at Melpadi (North Arcot), where Krsna III established his camp during his invasion of the Cola Kalamukha teachers kingdom, as recorded in Somadeva's Yasastilaka. bearing the names Sailarasi and Jnanarasi are mentioned in connection with endowments in the temple of Tiruvanaikkoyil (Chingleput) in the years 1127, 1205 and 1231. A Kalamukha teacher sold some land to the temple at Koyil, Tevarayanpettai (Tanjore district) in 1123 A. D. As we have seen, the Kalamukhas of the Mysore region were Pasupatas, and are often described as exponents of the Lakula creed; and sometimes a teacher is compared to Lakulisvara, the founder of the system, or styled as Lakulisvara-Pandita. Similar evidence is furnished by the Cola inscriptions. The head of the matha of the Kalamukhas at Melpadi was, for instance, called Lakulisvara-Pandita. Some of these Kalamukha teachers are called also mahavratin, 'possessed of the great vow'. An inscription from Jambai (South Arcot) of the reign of the Cola king Virarajendra (1063-69 A. D.) mentions a Mahavratin Lakulisvara-Pandita in connection with the local temple. An inscription of the twentieth year of the reign of Krsna III, i. e. about 959 A. D., describes how a certain man of a noble family, 1 Sastri (op. cit.), p. 224.

a devoted friend of the Cola prince Rajaditya, turned ascetic after the death of the latter on the battlefield (see p. 2), and became a mahavratin, under the name of Caturanana Pandita, and the head of the matha at Tiruvorriyur (Chingleput district). It is difficult to explain why the Kalamukha ascetics are styled here as mahavratin, which is the usual name for Kapalikas (see p. 358). It is true that the Kalamukhas are sometimes described as a sect very much akin to the Kapalikas who were notorious for their evil practices. But the Kalamukhas of the Mysore and Cola inscriptions were followers of the Pasupata system, and could hardly have been affiliated to the degenerate Kalamukha sect mentioned by Yamuna Muni and Ramanuja. It is, of course, not impossible that among the members of the Kalamukha Pasupata sect there were a few who might have adopted the Kapalika way of life and figured as the Kalamukhas stigmatized by the Vaisnava teachers. The Kalamukha teachers described in the Cola inscriptions as Mahavratins might be same as the Mahapasupatas mentioned by Udayana in his Nyaya-kusumanjali, which was composed in north India towards the end of the tenth century, about the time when the Kalamukha Pasupatas were becoming prominent in the south. We have noted (p. 241) that the commentators on Nyayakusumanjali explain Mahapasupatas as those Pasupatas who observe mahavrata or the great vow. A certain amount of doctrinal affinity seems to have existed as between the Pasupatas and the Kapalikas (see p. 241); but it seems certain that mahavrata did not exclusively mean the Kapalika cult, and the term mahavratin was applied also to the Kalamukha Pasupata teachers of the south. We learn from Sastri: Colas (op. cit.) that a chieftain named Vikramakesari presented a big matha to a Kalamukha teacher named Mallikarjuna who was his guru, and gave him also eleven villages attached to the matha for the maintenance of fifty Asita-vaktra, that is, Kalamukha ascetics. Vikramakesari belonged to Kodumbalur (Pudukkottah) and was an ally of the Cola king Parantaka II who ruled after 953 A. D. On p. 359 we have connected Mallikarjuna with the disreputable Kalamukha sect; but in the light of the evidence furnished by the Cola inscriptions, it will be more appropriate to suppose that he was one of the Kalamukha Pasupata teachers who figure so prominently in the religious life of the south from about the tenth century onwards. These teachers, respected and patronized by kings, and in charge of monastic establishments, could hardly be supposed to have belonged to a sect akin to the Kapalikas merely on account of the similarity of names.