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It is with very great pleasure that I have, in compliance with the wish of the author, written this short introduction to this volume of really interesting essays on subjects relating to the history of the Tamil people and their culture and civilisation. The history of the famous inhabitants of the ancient Pandya, Chola and Chera kingdoms is in no way less edifying or less valuable as a source of inspiration than the history of the inhabitants of any other part of India, which is throughout highly historic. The progress of Tamil civilisation from its primitive rude restlessness and wild aggressive valour to its ordered sense of humanity and exalted moral and religious aims of a later day is undoubtedly the result of the operation of various momentous influences, the chief ones among which have naturally been religious in origin and character. It is a fact well known to the students of the history of civilisation that, in some of its earlier stages of development, nothing acts so powerfully as an advancingly ethical religion in stimulating and sustaining progress in human communities. Accordingly the virile vitality and undecaying vigour of the Tamil people, subjected to the mellowing influences of Buddhism, Jainism and earlier as well as later Brahmanism gave rise in due time to their sweet, practical and in more than one respect heart-enthralling culture, of which the great Tamil classics, together with their noble Saiva and Vaishnava hymnology—not to