NO. 61. — 1908.] TAMIL VELALAS. 



27 



live stock, preferred a nomadic life with their flocks of sheep 

 and cattle in the jungles and forests of the outlying portions 

 of the country. Those of the Yadavas who adopted a settled 

 life in the Nadus, or cultivated portions of the country, were 

 called " Kilar," i.e., " landlords," and " Velalas," from "Vel," 

 the name of their mother country. These, living in societies, 

 and prospering in the districts they made cultivable and 

 fertile, gradually became experts in the various arts and 

 crafts that were necessary for their material welfare, and 

 attained to a mature civilization in process of time. The god 

 whom these Aryan Kshatryas worshipped in order to ensure 

 the blessings of fertility and prosperity of their land, was 

 Indra, the rain god of the primitive Aryas. That the worship 

 of Indra was an ancient practice of these people is proved by 

 the references one meets with in the Puranic stories to the 

 festivals of Indra celebrated by the Yadavas at Govardhana. 

 As their more primitive abodes were in the districts about the 

 Ganges, they called themselves " Gungaputras," 1 *\e.,"the 

 children of Gunga," and " Gungavamsas," i.e., " the tribe of 

 Gunga," or " those of the race of the Gunga," and the petty 

 kings who ruled over them were called " Velir " and 

 " Venmar." 



Now, that section of the Yadavas who chose a nomadic 

 life in the forests, tending their flocks of sheep and cattle, were 



aborigines, claim to be the progeny of Indra, while their connection 

 with the Pandiyas, who were known also as " Marar," was always of so 

 intimate a kind that it seems hard to suppose the existence of any 

 racial difference between them. The princes of the Maravas have, 

 from ancient times, claimed kinship with the Cholas of the Solar race, 

 and once the connection between these two races is allowed, the Indra 

 festival celebrated in times of old in the Chola capital must, far from 

 being an alien importation into the Tamil country, be looked upon as 

 entirely indigenous, in its origin and development, to pre-Aryan India. 

 It is worthy of notice that the late Professor Huxley considered the 

 Maravas and the other South Indian races allied to them as kinsmen of 

 the ancient Egyptians, whose kings bore the proud title of " the Sons of 

 Ra," i.e., the sun.— V. J. T. 



1 " Kankaikulaththar " is one of the names of the Tamil Velalas. 

 Mr. Kanakasabhai Pillai identifies them with the " Gangaridse " of 

 ancient Greek writers. — Vide his "Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years 

 Ago," p. 114. 



