There is a peculiar system of describing things, technically called PulaneŠi Va ˜akkam, adopted in Tamil from the very beginning, in erotic literature, in accordance with a set of stereotyped principles, and it is owing to this literary convention that we are able to get a few glimpses of the living conditions of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Tamilians, even at this distance of time.

     (1) The earliest picture we get from Tamil literature of the conditions of living of primitive Tamils, is that each of the five geographical regions into which Tamil Nadu is naturally divided, was inhabited by a single tribe following a distinct pursuit in accordance with the natural surroundings as the hilly region by hunters, the desert region by depredators, the pastoral region by cowherds and shepherds, the agricultural region by farmers and the littoral region by fishermen.

     This kind of situation was undoubtedly prior to the evolution of urban society, and is indicative at once of the antiquity and indigenous nature of the Tamil or Dravidian race. The preposterousness of the notion that the Dravidians, driven from their North Indian Home by the Aryans, separated themselves into the five geographical classes in South India or in the Lemurian continent, needs no mention.

     (2) The common order in which the five geographical tracts are enumerated, makes us infer that the primitive Tamilians, who originally inhabited mountain regions, spread from one region to another following the courses of big rivers up to the sea, as population increased and civilization advanced.

    The ancient Tamils observed not only that the land surface of the earth consisted of five natural regions, but that the manifestation of human life corresponded to the characteristics of the milieu in which each tribe has grown. The five regions were called (1) KuŠi½ji, the hilly country, (2) Pƒlai the dry waterless region, (3) Mullai, the pastoral land between the highlands and the lowlands, (4) Marudam the lower courses of rivers; and