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



It is traditionally reported that the Shanars who inhabit Tinnevelly 

 came from the neighbourhood of Jaffna in Ceylon ; that one portion 

 of them — the class now called " Nadans" (lords of the soil) — entered 

 Tinnevelly by way of Ramnad, bringing with them seed nuts of the 

 Jaffna palmyrah, the best in the East, and appropriating or obtaining 

 from the ancient Pandyah princes (as the most suitable region for the 

 cultivation of the palmyrah) the sandy waste lands of Manad, in the 

 south-east of Tinnevelly, over which to the present they claim rights 

 of seigniorage ; and that the other portion of the immigrants, esteemed 

 a lower division of the caste, came by sea to the south of Travancore, 

 where vast numbers of them are still to be found (1850) ; and from 

 whence, having but little land of their own, they have gradually spread 

 themselves over Tinnevelly, on the invitation of the Nadans and other 

 proprietors of land, and who, without the help of their poor neigh- 

 bours as climbers, could derive but little profit from their immense 

 forests of palmyrahs. Some of these immigrations have probably 

 taken place since the Christian era. 



After referring to a tradition of the Syrian Christians of 



Travancore, that the Ilavers, or " Sinhalese," were brought over 



from Ceylon by their ancestors, Dr. Caldwell endeavours to 



guard against the conclusion that the Shanars were " Sinhalese" 



in the sense of that term which is distinguished from Tamil. 



The traditions of the Buddhistical Sinhalese seems to connect them 

 nationally as well as religiously with Behar, and consequently with, 

 the Brahmanical tribes. The Shanars, on the contrary, though 

 probably immigrants from Ceylon, are Hindus, not of the Brahmanical 

 but of the Tamil or aboriginal race ; the descendants of the northern: 

 coasts of Ceylon being themselves Tamulians, the descendants either 

 of early Tamil colonists or of the marauding Cholas, who are said 

 repeatedly to have made irruptions into Ceylon both before and after 

 the Christian era. 



It is not safe at present to assume, what indeed only 

 suggested itself to Dr. Caldwell, that Behar has been clearly 

 identified as a source of the ethnology of all that is compre- 

 hended under the distinctive term " Sinhalese." And the 

 fact that the Mahdwcmsa gives an account of the conversions 

 of the resident Sinhalese to Buddhism corrects the idea that 

 any Buddhist tribe from Behar emigrated to Ceylon. 



That the marauding Cholas left descendants is a fair 

 inference. The old division of the Tamils in ancient times 

 was into Cheras, Cholas, and Pandiyas, according to Tamil 

 legends, who first lived and ruled in common at Kolkei, 

 near the mouth of the Tambraparni. 



This is from " The History of Tinnevelly," in which 

 Dr. Caldwell puts in a claim for this Tamil locality to 



