No. 61.— 1908.] 



TAMIL V EL ALAS. 



35 



sutra period of Sanskrit literature," tilling the ground was the 

 only means of livelihood adopted by the Velalas, " and they 

 had no other." This statement means, it appears to me, 

 nothing more than that agriculture was the chief occupation 

 of the greater portion of them. For none will deny that 

 there were among them many who, as distinguished chiefs 

 owning small kingdoms, exercised duties appropriate only to 

 the royalty, while there were also others who served the 

 Tamil kings in high offices of state, and were counted worthy 

 of high royal favours and marks of honour, as the following 

 quotations from " Tolkappiam " should unmistakably show : — 



(1) " The rights and privileges natural to the royalty 



belong to others also besides the king." 



(2) " The bow, the lance, the feet-rings, the kanni 



(i.e., the bouquet), the garland, the necklace, the 

 chariot, and the sword belong to others also of 

 ancient ancestry besides the king." 



(3) " The feet-ring and the kanni are the substantial 



awards they receive in the service of the king." 



We understand from the above passages, of which the 

 first two enumerate the privileges of the Velir and the last 

 one those of the Velalas, that most of the distinctions or 

 privileges which were held appropriate only to crowned heads 

 belonged to the Velir too, while to the Velalas belonged the 

 privileges of wearing only the feet-ring and the kanni. As 

 the social customs and occupations of the Velir were, in 

 the time of the grammarian Tolkappian, identical, not with 

 those peculiar to either the Kshatriyas or the Vaisyas 

 taken separately, but with those of both these classes taken 

 together, that grammarian naturally ascribed to them duties 

 belonging to both, i.e., the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas. 

 But the commentator, where the text appeared to him to 

 imply a high social standing for the Velalas, there invariably 

 ascribes a noble and high descent to them, and where the 

 status implied by the text is an inferior one, there he uniformly 

 assigns it to the " Uluthunpor," or the poorer class among 

 the Velalas. This, of course, represents their condition then. 

 Further, as the greater number of those who formed the 



d 2 



