சாதி வேற்றுமையும் போலிச்சைவரும்
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was no any hard and fast rule that one caste shouldnot adopt the profession of another nor should the one mix with another. Many Dravidian kings, merchants and even slaves took part in the composition of the Vedic hymns and followed professions that suited best their taste and capacity.
In the second chapter, the same subject is continued and discussed how, even at the time of the twelve oldest upanishads and the two epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana when attempts were made by brahmins to make castes hereditary and exalt themselves at the expense of others, only merit and not birth was regarded as constituting a high caste.
In the third chapter are shown how, at the time when a series of Sanscrit works called Dharma Sastras came to be written, the hereditary claims of castes were just beginning to tighten their hold on the people, how the brahmins were attempting to demand exclusive privileges for themselves and devise the cruellest and the most oppressive measures for the labouring classes, how, even then, importance was attached not to birth but to merit, and how the brahmins and others who failed, in the smallest degree, to perform the prescribed duties and functions of their caste lost their caste and became low-born. Here, for the first time, the mischief is pointed out of including the Tamilians in the Sudra or slave caste. The institution of caste-system originated not with the Aryans as is erroneously supposed by oriental scholars, but with the statesmen of the ancient Tamilians themselves who had attained to a high degree of civilisation long before the Aryans entered India.
In the fourth chapter, a critical inquiry of the ‘Tolkappiam', a very ancient Tamil work which is older then even some portions of the Rig-Veda, is taken up - especially of its sections dealing with the social classifications of the Tamil people. How the Tamil people reached the agricultural stage many centuries before when the Aryans were still in the pastoral stage leading the life of nomads and how the life of an agricultural people necessitated the classification of its men and women into different classes according to their occupations, are clearly proved by the aid of its study. Though this division of the Tamil people was rendered necessary by the conditions of their civilized life, there was
