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234 its origin to Agastya, the reputed leader of the first band of Brahman immigrants in South India. The date of Agastya is lost in myth, and the traditions, which are in themselves conflicting, represent him as still living on the Pothiya mountains in the Tinnevelly district.

Let us therefore turn our attention to other sources to discover his date. The introduction of the Tamil alphabet seems to afford us the best clue to get at this date, because prior to it no society of learned men or any seminary could have come into existence, and because it would almost be impossible for a race without a system of writing to possess a literature. Undoubtedly, the Sanskrit Vedas had been in existence long before they were committed to writing; but the case of the Vedas is altogether different from that of the Tamil poems, which in the opinion of J. Vinson, were 'essays, pamphlets and short poems.' The Vedas were the sacred scriptures of the Aryans and were, therefore, handed down orally from generation to generation as a sacred trust and were preserved in their memory. Even after the introduction of writing in North India the conservative attitude of the Brahmans resisted all inducements to write down their Vedas for a long time which have been, for that reason, known as the 'unwritten word', or the எழுத்தாக்கிளவி. Whereas among the Dravidian Tamils there was no such priestly class, and none of their earlier poems belonging to the earliest or the pre-academic period was held in