God Almighty was and is worshipped under the names of Siva and Tirumƒl by two different sections of the Tamilians from pre-historic times, and Saivism and Vaishnavism are at least as different as Christianity and Islam, if not as Jainism and Buddhism.

     The goddess of learning, Nƒmaga˜ or Kalaimaga˜ (Skt. Sarasvati), was made wife of Brahma, who is said to have seated her in his tongue, and whose four faces are said to represent the four Vedas. The implications of this representation were that Brahama, the supposed progenitor of the Brahmin community, created the Brahmins as a distinct species endowed with extraordinary intelligence, to make them fit exclusively for higher studies and all learned professions, and that the Vedas were the source of all branches of learning or knowledge.

     The Vedic Brahmins, though they succeeded in making the autochthons believe that the former were of celestial descent, utterly failed in maintaining the Brahma cult, and hence the universal absence of any temple or worship to the deity. The story specially fabricated to account for this phenomenon only brands Brahma as a notorious and deliberate liar unfit for veneration by anybody. It is noteworthy that he is abandoned even by the Brahmins.

     As Saivism and Vaishnavism are two separate religions there arose a bitter and dangerous controversy between them in Tamil Nadu during the mediaeval centuries of the Chrisitian era, as to “Who was God Almighty, whether Siva or Vishnu, that controlled all the three divine functionaries”? As a result of this, either sect maintained that its own god was God Absolute discharging all the three functions single-handed. Thus the Hindu Triad broke off in practice, though it still remains in theory in Purƒ–ic lore.

    Now every enlightened Tamilian prefers to style himself or herself either a Saivite or a Vaishnavite and not a Hindu, as his or her mediaeval ancestors did.

     Prior to the Aryan advent, the Tamilians were of three classes, according to the degree of their mental and intellectual development, in point of religious worship, the lower class embracing polytheism, the middle class following idolatrous