Changing Political Formations (c. 600 BCE to c.

300 CE)

Tamilakam

[R. Champakalakshmi- Trade, Ideology and Urbanization: South India 300 BC to AD 1300]

[for students consultation purpose only]

The study aims at providing regional perspectives based on empirical studies of specific
urban centres within a socio-historical and cultural context highlighting the major incentives
and focal points for urban growth. The region chosen for study is Tamilakam, which in the
early historical period covered a larger geographical area than the present Tamil Nadu, it
included present Kerala region as well. Any discussion on urbanism would be to provide a
general picture of the socio-economic and political configurations of early historical
Tamilakam. Society in early Tamilakam was organized on the basis of kinship ties (kuḍi =
clan)with clear perception of man=environment relationship, as reflected in distinctive
pattern of economic activities in different eco-zones called the tiṇai , a dominant theme in
Sangam poetry. Five such tiṇais are described in the Sangam works and points to an
understanding of human adaptation to environment.

Interspersed with one another, the aintiṇai or five eco-situations were marked by different
forms of production ranging from primitive subsistence level hunting and gathering (kuṛiñci
tiṇai=hilly backwoods), pastoralism /animal husbandry and shifting cultivation (mullai
tiṇai=pastoral tract/forest), fishing (neital tiṇai= coastal/littoral), to agriculture (marutam=
riverine wetland/plains), while plundering and cattle lifting as an occupation characterized the
transitory zone of pālai= parched/arid zone. Blending of tiṇais also occurred with mixed
forms of subsistence. In effect four major forms of production can be identified viz. animal
husbandry, shifting agriculture, petty commodity production and plough agriculture.

Forces of change have been recognized only in the marutam, where plough agriculture
appeared in the later phases and new agrarian units emerged such as brāhmaṇa
households/settlements and warrior settlements. In the neital apart from fishing, salt
manufacturing and eventually trade also became important economic activities. In the
brāhmaṇa households of marutam, the cultivating groups in the service of the brāhmaṇas
created new relations of production outside the kinship framework, on which all
contemporary production activities were based. Such service groups may point to the
beginnings of a new stratification by gradually crystallizing into castes later.
 The tiṇais, though uneven in their socio-economic milieu, were basically tribal in
organization. Kinship was the basis of production relations in all the tiṇais, with no social
division of labour even in the marutam, where the households increasingly organized and
controlled production. Social differentiation did not develop in marutam and neital zones,
beyond a broad division into two levels: the melor (the higher ones) and the kilor (the lower
ones). Despite the presence of brāhmaṇa households there is no evidence of the impact of the
varṇa ideology.

There is enough evidence to show that specialized craft production also developed such
as metal working, weaving and salt manufacturing, evidently in response to local exchange as
well as inter-regional and long distance trade. Such specialists are known both from literature
and the early Tamil Brāhmi inscriptions. They have, however, been viewed as mere
functionaries in a complex system of co-operation based on the network of kinship relations.

A gift (koḍai) was the main means of redistribution, which itself was based on kinship and
inter-personal relationship beyond kinship, e.g. the pulavar poets receiving gifts from the
chief or patron. The institution of gifts was particularly important as a source of legitimation
for the ruling lineages and chiefs. Redistribution through gifts was of two kinds, the one of
subsistence level goods and the other of prestigious goods. Three levels of redistribution may
be identified. Redistribution of subsistence goods seems to have taken place at all the three
levels, the vendar, velir and kilar in a descending order. The vendar provided subsistence
goods on various occasions, at the time of war for their fighters and also to the lowly bards
(pāṇar) who sang their praise for their munificence. At a higher level the vendar also made
gifts to the pulavar, such gifts consisting of prestigious items like gold coins and gold lotuses,
gems and muslinetc. While subsistence gooda thus got redistributed at all the three levels, the
gift of luxury items became the prestigious form of exchange with an ‘ideo-technic’ or
‘socio-technic’ value, but only at the higher levels of vendar and velir. Plundered items got
redistributed while luxury items of trade entered the gift exchange.

Thus more than agriculture, the Cēra-Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya ruling families depened, for socio-
political hegemony, on maritime trade which the coastal regions (neital) adjacent to their
maritime mainland carried on with distant lands. Socio-political dominance was shared by
these three ruling families (Mu vendar) and the minor chieftains called velir. Strife among
the vendar was a common feature for control over each other’s riverine tracts and other rich
resources like pearls and pepper. Strife as well as matrimonial alliance were common
between the vendar and velir for hegemony and control over resources of the hilly, forest and
other zones. Tribal warfare, endemic to such early societies, is also corroborated by the
evidence of archaeology, which shows a predominance of war weapons among the
Megalithic burials. The ideology of war and heroism dominates the Sangam poetry,
especially the puram collections (war poems).

The absence of a regukar system of tax or tribute is underlined by the idealization of

war/plunder and situations (turai) of raids, the glorification of the warrior, the hero and death
in battle, the sharing of the great meal by the ruler/chief with his warriors and the reward in
the form of land to the warrior. Hence, the lack of evidence on institutional mechanisms for
appropriating surplus by the rulers characteristic of a developed state state system, points to
the tribal character of these chiefdoms, which otherwise had the potential of developing into
kingdoms or incipient states.

Royal patronage of a whole community of Buddhist lay followers, representing the trading
and artisanal groups, craftsmen as well as economically poorer sections of society,
contributed to the building up of institutions like the monastery and the guild in the Deccan
and Andhra, which marked the foci urban growth and routes of communication and trade. On
the contrary, such networks, which are crucial in establishing links between trade and craft
production and a market system, were less developed in Tamilakam, and hence the absence of
large scale patronage to Buddhist institutions like monasteries. The references to Buddhism
in the earlier poems of the Sangam anthologies indicate that Buddhism and Jainism were
among the many religious faiths which had a following in the politico-commercial centres
like Puhar, Vanci and Madurai.

The concept of tiṇai provides the clue to the nature of Tamil religion. This is evident from
the descriptions of the deities of the different tiṇais who are invoked for success in love and
war. The tribal basis of these deities is reflected in their verbal imagery and their close
association with the ecological/environment background. Thus, Murukan was the god of love
and war of the kurinci tribes (hunters); Mayon, the pastoral deity of mullai; Korravai, the
goddess of the hunters and robbers of palai; Vendan, the sea god of the neital.

The spread of Buddhism and Jainism coincided with the increase in trade and commercial
activity and introduced an element of heterogeneity in the urban centres. Former in the
coastal towns and latter in the inland centres, both in the political and commercial centres and
on trade routes. The heterogeneity of the urban populationin the inland and coastal centres
shows that people of different ethnic origins, different occupational background and
belonging to various religions aggregated in towns, where brahmanical and folk cults were
equally well represented.

Different Levels of Exchange

In a society, wherein reciprocity and redistribution were determinedby kinship and

interpersonal relations regular local exchange was mainly based on barter, both in day to day
transactions and in inter-tiṇai exchange, i.e. mutual exchange of resources available in the
respective tiṇais, or a straight exchange of goods of different tiṇais –called noṭuttal –hill
products like wood , honey, bamboo-rice, etc.in exchange for the marutam paddy or mullai
dairy products and the salt of neital for the paddy of marutam. The centres at which they
were exchanged could well have become nodal points on trade routes in the process of the
expansion of trading networks.

The different levels of exchange thus show a barter or person to person exchange of
goods of daily consumption like honey, fish, meat, toddy etc. Paddy and salt entered the
larger exchange network, while pepper and oter spices, pearls, precious stones, aromatic
woods and cotton textiles may have been produced for the overseas exchange markets. Most
items were traded as raw materials but goods like textiles, gems and jewels were among the
few manufactured products meant for trade. Such commodities were encountered only in a
few market centres, which had inter-regional commercial contacts such as Pūhār, Madurai
and Vañci.

There were angāḍis (markets) and āvaṇams (stores) in places like Puhar, Madurai and
Vañci, which became major commercial centres due to expansion of trade on the eastern
coast of Tamilakam. Two kinds of markets – the nāḷangāḍi or the day market, and the
aḷḷangāḍi or the evening market – were found in Pūhar. Occasional caravans of itinerant
traders such as umaṇar and vambalar, carrying goods to the interior. The paratavar were the
most distinctive of such merchants. They were inhabitants of the neital tract, involved in such
activities as fishing, manufacturing salt and making toddy. The more prosperous among the
traders and merchants who moved on highways or major trade routes, made donations of
caves and beds to Jain and Buddhist monks. The early Tamil Brāhmi inscriptions, recording
these donations, indeed mark the trade routes, and in many significant ways confirm the
literary references to specialist traders, e.g. uppu vāṇikan (salt merchant), panita vāṇkan
(toddy seller), kolu vāṇikan (iron-monger), aruvai vāṇikan (cloth marchant), pon vāṇikan
(gold merchant), maṇiy vaṇṇakkan (lapidary) as donors, apart from the Cēra and Pāṇḍya
families. Both literature and epigraphs thus refer to the trader and the nature of his trade.

Thus this study of politico-socio-economic development patterns of Tamilakam region for

the given period explicitly makes evident through the Sangam literature and epigraphs of the
period the significance of inter-tiṇai exchange system for the emergence of any structure in
the region.