Page:Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture.djvu/82



The word for trade vaṇigam is usually supposed to be derived from Sanskrit vāṇijyam. The probabilities are just the other way about. Vaṇiyam is derived from vanik or baṇik, merchant, and this later word is almost certainly from the vedic paṇi. The paṇis were the traders of Vedic times and as they were Dasyus and would not pay dakshiṇā to the performers of Ārya rites the Rishis denounced them as being niggards. The paṇis being Dasyus were most probably the Tamil traders of the early Vedic epoch, for in those days the Tamils alone of South Indians were the most civilized tribes and the objects of internal trade, then and for long after, were, as it has been already pointed out, South Indian products like pearls, corals, sandal' wood, pepper, and other spices. Hence the word paṇi and its variants and derivatives must have passed to North India from the South; hence Tamil vaṇiga became baṇik and paṇi. There is a Vedic root paṇ, to negotiate, which in later Sanskrit came to mean to stake. This root may have been coined from paṇi.

Trade first began in Neydal. For the paradavar of that region, where cereals could not be raised, could get only fish and salt to eat. Now it may be possible to keep up life solely on fish, all the courses from soup to pudding being made from that one food-stuff, but one cannot live comfortably for any length of time on fish alone, notwithstanding the fact that the remote ancestors of all animals were aquatic beings; for very soon the hankering for vegetable food will assert itself. So the ancient dwellers of the littoral tracts learnt to carry fish and salt and (later salted fish) to the neighbouring marudam and barter their goods for cereals. Hence in the poems belonging to the Neydal tiṇai there is frequent mention of the trade in salt. One instance of it may be given. 'His wounds caused by the sword-fish having been cured, my father has gone to the big blue sea for fishing; my mother too has gone to the salt fields to barter salt for white rice; so if the lover comes now he can without any hindrance meet his mistress.'

Sellers of salt were called umaṇar, umaṭṭiyar. This ancient trade in which a double bag of salt was placed like a saddle on the back of a bull, which was driven from place to place in the interior of the land, can be observed even to-day in far-off villages. When the salt trade reached greater proportions it was carried in carts. 'The wheel, uruḷi of the cart was surrounded by a round rim śuṭṭu which went round the spokes, ār, tightly fixed to the hub kuṛadu, which looked like a drum, muḻavu. The strong yoke, pār, was fastened to two long beams placed on the axle-tree, parūkkai, which looked like an eḻū, timber placed between two elephants to prevent them from fighting with each other. Its top, vāy, bore a creaking mat of ragi stalks, ārvai, as the hill bears clouds on its top. In the