MEMOEANDUM, 



In this memorandum I propose to examine whether the 

 economic condition of the Madras Presidency, and especially of 

 the agricultural classes, has improved or deteriorated during the 

 last 40 years of British administration, and whether, if there 

 has been improvement,. it is proceeding on right lines. 



Section I. — The state of the country and the condition of the 

 people in former centuries. 



2. It is generally admitted that the last century, which 

 ,. , immediately preceded the establishment of 



Scantiness of miorma- -r^.,.i ^a . . xt 



tion as to the condition British powcr lu oouthem India, was a 

 of the people in former period of auarchy and of suffering to the 



C6DL11P16S "^ *^ 



masses of the population ; but it would be 

 interesting to learn what was the condition of the people in 

 the preceding centuries under native rulers. Information on 

 the subject is, however, exceedingly scanty, the very names of 

 some of the dynasties which bore sway in Southern India 

 having been forgotten ^ ; and it is only recently by a laborious 

 study of ancient inscriptions, Indian archaeologists have been 

 endeavouring to construct a South Indian history. The results 

 of their researches, so far as they have gone, have been sum- 

 marized by Mr. R. Sewell, M.C.S., in his Lists of Antiquities 

 of the Madras Presidency^ and I have ventured to extract 

 Mr. Sewell's remarks in an appendix ^ to this memorandum. 

 It will be seen from Mr. Sewell's account, that from the earliest 

 historical times Southern India was "divided into a nun^jber of 

 small kingdoms, which, like the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, 

 were continually at war with one another ; that each dynasty 

 aspired for universal dominion and asserted it as opportunities 

 offered ; that the pressure of immigration of tribes from Northern 

 India added to the distracted state of the country caused by 

 internecine wars; and that from the 14th century, when the 

 Muhammadans pushed their arms to Southern India and founded 

 Muhummadan kingdoms in the Northern Deccan, to the begin- 

 ning of the 19th century, the country seldom enjoyed peace. 



1 The Pallava dynasty appears to have been a powerful one and ruled over all the' East 

 Coast districts from the Kistna to the Coleroon and to have had iis capital at Conjeeveram. 

 Even ifhe name of the dynasty has gone completely out of the memory of the people of 

 the country pver whom it ruled. 



^ Vide appendix A, section I, 



