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62 ted the bulk of the South Indian population. They could not put these earlier Naga inhabitants in the Sudra division along with the Dravidian Vellalas for fear of injuring the feelings of the Tamil kings and the Velir nobility. To get over this difficulty they had to devise a new scheme of classification on an altogether different principle, which depended on the nature of the soil or region in which the tribes happened to live.

This regional classification of the non-Aryan Tamil tribes is conspicuous by the absence of the Velir or the Vellala caste. It must, therefore, refer only to the pre-Dravidian tribes mentioned in Groups I and II given above. Palai is sometimes omitted or amalgamated with Kurinji; and the tribes of these two regions consequently interchange.

The earliest Tamil works inform us that there were two sections among the Velirs or pure Dravidi- ans, namely the cultivating and the non-cultivating. As a rule the latter section furnished statesmen and