Chapter Five
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE I. The Three Kingdoms The political history of the early Tamil kingdoms can be drawn only in general outline because of the lack of historical documents. A concise statement of this early age from available sources has been made in The Cambridge History of India, Volume I, Chapter XXIV: "The Early History of Southern India". The author is the late L. D. BARNETT. LONG "BEFORE THE beginning of the Christian era the Dravidian south had developed a considerable culture of its own, and its inhabitants had consolidated themselves into powerful kingdoms, some of which carried on a thriving trade with western Asia, Egypt, and later with the Greek and Roman empires.1 The chief of these were the three Tamil kingdoms, the Andhras, Kalingas and Mahārāshtra. The Tamils have retained more tenaciously than any of their kindred the ancient traditions of the proto-Dravidian race. True, they have written no histories until modern times; but they have preserved a large number of ancient poems relating to the exploits and administration of kings and princes in an age far earlier than the oldest existing literature of their Dravidian neighbours. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 The Tyrians apparently Imported thence ivory, apes, and peacocks (Tamil togai) as we know, from I Kings X, 22 and II Chronicles IX, 21. Somewhat later we find India-to a large extent Southern India-exporting pepper (Tamil pippali), rice (Tamil arici) ginger (Tamil inji-ver) and cinnamon (Tamil karuppu or kārppu), besides spices, precious stones, coral, pearls, cloth, muslin, silk, tortoise-shell, etc. See J. Kennedy, The Early Commerce of India with Babylon, J.R.A.S., 1898, pp. 241 ff. |