JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XXI. 



for instance, we find such passages as the following, viz. : 

 " The renowned Venthar 1 and Velir " the Venthar and Velir," 

 " the Velir and the two great Venthar," &o. From these 

 references, in which the " Velir " almost always appear in 

 company with the three paramount rulers of Tamilakam, 2 

 it may fairly be concluded that, next to the kings themselves, 

 the most honoured amongst the petty rulers and princes of 

 the country were the chiefs of this " Velir " race. More- 

 over, the references to this people found in Tamil works as 

 "the very ancient Velir " and the Velir who boasted of 

 " an ancestry of forty-nine generations " must be held to 

 imply that their settlement in South India dated from very 

 ancient times. 



Now, who were these " Vels," and what was their primitive 

 habitat ? Were they the kith and kin of the primitive 

 Tamils, or foreign immigrants, of a later period ? What is 

 their place in the history and chronology of South India ? 



The learned Naccinarkiniyar, 3 in his commentary on the 

 preface to " Tolkappiam," 4 notices some of the traditions 



1 Kings.— V. J. T. 



2 The Tamil country. This is identical with the " Limirike " 

 (Damirike) of the Greek writers Periplus and Ptolemy. — V. J. T. 



3 " The commentary of Naccinarkiniyar is the best and latest of all 

 the existing commentaries on the grammar of Tolkappian. He was a 

 learned Jain Brahman, and seems to have mastered Tamil and Sans- 

 crit, and by writing commentaries on many great and important 

 Tamil works has done a service to Tamil literature which Madhava- 

 carya and Mallinathasuri have done for Sanscrit. In the colophons to 

 the commentary, he is said to have been a native of Madura and born 

 of the Bharadwaja gotra. 



" There is a tradition which makes Naccinarkiniyar an elder con- 

 temporary of Parimelalagar, who, in his commentary on the 4 Kural' of 

 Tiruvalluvar, refers to a Bhoja king of Dhara who lived in the 11th 

 century a.d." — Vide Report on a Search for Sanscrit and Tamil Manu- 

 scripts for the Years 1893-94, by M. Sheshagiri Sastri, M.A., Curator, 

 Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, and Professor of Sanscrit 

 and Comparative Philology, Presidency College, Madras, No. 2, pp. 107 

 and 110. 



Recent researches have definitely fixed the 11th century a.d. as the 

 upper limit of the period of this author. — V. J. T. 



4 4 'Tolkappiam " is the oldest Tamil grammar now extant. It was 

 composed by a Brahman named Tolkappian, who lived, according to 



