WHY ARAYARS ARE VAISHNAVITES?

Though the Arayars belong to fishing community of Muthurajas in Tamilnadu and Kerala, they are culturally highly civilized community. They are artists associated with Always in their devotional expressions towards Vishnu.

This seems to be an unusual practice to move hand in hand with the people Muthuraja Arayar community. This unusual phenomenon is to be understood from the fact that the Arayars came from Kalinga (North), where Buddhism practically eliminated Hinduism under the patronage of powerful kings like Ashoka. These Arayars came to south India, particularly to Tamil speaking lands and Srilanka with single purpose of spreading Buddhism and they were mostly the artists attached to Buddhist monasteries/temples.

When Adi Sankaracharya cleverly declared that Budda was an incarnation of Visnhu, the buddhist people started seeing Vishnu in Budda statues. In the process of seeing Vishnu in Budda, the people ultimately forgot Buddha and became complete Hindus. The Arayar artists attached to Buddhist temples too started singing Vaishnava keerthanas in place of Buddha rhymes and thus transformed themselves in to Vaishnava devotees, totally forgetting the origins of their Buddhist ancestors.