Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/65

Rh “well fed on fish and flesh and armed with bows, their hordes terrified their enemies by their dashing valour.”

The Nagas, were skilled in many arts and especially in weaving. The Nagas of the Kalinga country were so famous in the art of weaving that the word kalingam in Tamil has come to signify a cloth. At the period which I describe, the Nagas inhabiting the Eastern Coast in the Pandyan territory were great weavers, and exported a large quantity of cloths and muslins. The fine muslins manufactured by the Nagas were highly prized by the Tamils and fetched fabulous prices in foreign countries. Tamil poets allude to a famous chieftain Ay who offered to the image of Siva, one of these priceless muslins which had been presented to him by Nila-Naga.

It was from the Nagas that the Aryas first learnt the art o writing; and hence Sanscrit characters are to this day known as Deva-nâgari.

While the fair skinned Aryas who had entered India through the Kabul valley, were settled in the Punjab, a horde of the yellow races who inhabited the central table land of Asia, appear to have passed southward through the numerous passes between Tibet and Nepal, and occupied the Gangetic Valley. Sanscrit writers name these yellow races Yakshas: Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos: and Chinese historians speak of them as the Yuhem. These yellow races being natives of the higher regions of the earth, considered themselves to be superior to the inhabitants of the plains, arid assumed the name of Daivaputras or “the sons of Gods.” They were intellectually and morally a superior race of people, and eventually spread over the whole of Bengal; and emigrated thence by sea to Southern India and Ceylon.

When the Ramayana was composed the Yekshas had reached the southernmost parts of India, and they are alluded to in that poem as inhabiting the sea-coast facing Ceylon.