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THE TAMIL CASTES
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confined to the circumscribed limits of that province; and there are no grounds to assign to it a western origin. Since co-operation and combined effort are necessary to the wellbeing of a nation why should the cultivating classes be always at enmity with the Kammalas? We learn from the inscriptions already referred to that the Brahmans adhered to neither side, though some lists erroneously mention them as partizans. The serfs of the cultivating castes, namely, the Pallis, Pallars &c., were included in the left while their masters, the Vellalas, espoused the right-hand division. The very fact of the inclusion of the Telugu and Canarese Madigas and Bedars and the Tamil Pallars and Pallis in the left-hand faction goes to confirm the origin of this dispute from outside the Kalinga, Karnataka, Pallava and Pandya countries ; and the exclusion from it of the corresponding Tamil castes—Malaiman, Vedan and Paraiya—seems to point out the Chola kingdom as the land of its origin.

To call into existence such a powerful and wide-spread social division, a single cause of small magnitude would never suffice. It has, therefore, been suggested by Rao Bahadur M. Ranga Charyar that this division originated from the Dravidian family organization during its passage ‘from the matriarchal to the patriarchal state'. He says that 'in their families ...the mother seems to have been the head thereof and property seems to have descended from the mother to the daughter'. And in proof of the