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92 ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF THE TAMILS years by the Nāyak of Tanjore who claimed to be its suzerain. Raghunātha Nāyak of Tanjore wanted to help the Jaffnese ruler of the time (Circa 1615-6) and crossed the Gulf of Mannar by means of a chain of boats. See the Yälpána Vaibhava Mālai of Mayilvāhana Pulavar, composed in the beginning of the 17th century; The History of Jaffna in the Portuguese Period by the Reverend S. Gnanaprakasar; Ancient Jaffra by C. Rasanayakam, and The History of Jaffna in Tamil. 15. The Carians : According to Herodotus the Carians came to the mainland from the Islauds. Can it not be that Caria is derived from Kera or Cera ? Thucydides believed that the armament of the Carians was better than that of the Hellenic settlers in Asia Minor since these adopted their helmets and shields with the plumes and the grips. As early as the seventh century B.C. Carian soldiers were requistioned as soldiers of fortune. The Iliad refers to their practice of fine handicrafts in metal, ivory and leather; and later authors and the cutting of precious stones and purple-dyeing and credit them with a metric system, with improvements in ship-building, with refinements of music and the invention of certain musical modes, with an apparatus for writing, and with some improved form of mill for grinding corn. (Dr. Hogarth in Vol. II of The Cambridge Ancient History). 16. Still in use at Muscat by the peoplc of Socotra (See Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 8,21 and 27). Sailors of primitive races were very conservative; and it is said that their earliest canoes can enable us to descry the Stone Age man fighting the sea. The aborigines of Australia and Tasmania have been traced back to Indonesia.