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மறைமலையம் 22
both in the southern and the northern parts of India. There are clear evidences to prove that alomost all the kings who ruled over India in the past, were of the Tamilian stock, whom the Aryan priests had called the kshattriyas. should the same be found also in the Artha Sastra of Kautilya in Sanscrit, one bearing a striking resemblance to the other, anable historian as Dr. Krishnaswamy would not be justified, as he has done in his 'contributions',1 in concluding from that and that alone that Thiruvalluvar borrowed his konwledge of it from Kautilya. You must show several other coincidences, not one or thow stray points of similarities as in the present case, before you forgotten that ancient writers on politics were in a large measure recording in their works not their won ideas with regard to what ought to be the principles of an administrative system and how they have to be carried into execution, but only the ideas they had obsered to prevail already among the kings and to guide their ruling operations. Unfortunately this has been overlooked by Dr. Krishnaswamy when, in his eagerness to establish the influence of the Aryan writers over the Tamilian, he had lighted on a passage in the sacred Kural of St. Thiruvalluvar which makes reference to a state-craft, resembling that in the Artha Sastra of Kautliya.
The root-cause of souch a misapprehension even on the part of great scholars who have imbibed the ideas of refined western education, lies deep in the high opinion which one froms of himself, and of his caste at the expense of others and other castes, It is a Iamentable fact that, in spite of their extreme reluctance of mingle with the brahmins of the north, the South Indian brahmins identify themselves with the Tamils. Still, there is not a shadow of proof to establish their claim of descent from the Aryans of the north. Probably they imagine that their caste - superiority can be maintained only by keeping themselves entirely aloof from the people of this country and by claiming only Sanscrit as their own language which, being dead and therefore little understood by the people, serves their purpose to make it the language of the celestials and the exclusive repository of revealed scriptures. Further, they repudiate the very idea that any
