Visva Gundarasana Campu, for instance, describes Muslims (called ‘Yavanas’, a term originally applied to Greeks) as ‘terrifying’ clans that were a threat to ‘temples of Siva and of Vishnu on his serpent couch’. The same text, interestingly, also disparages other ‘evil people’ who ‘treat brahmins with contempt, as if they were no better than blades of grass’—in this case, the ‘evil people’ are Europeans settled in Madras.
