18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST practice of conferring land grants on political favourites—a practice which eventually led to the development of feudalism and the ultimate decline of the State.7 It can be analysed with greater confidence in the light of clearer evidence. Therefore it helps us to place the earlier developments in historical perspective. However, it also points to an external factor influencing the growth of Tamil society, the waves of the great Aryan brahmin migratory movement in search of cultivable land, which was also perhaps the greatest single movement in early Indian history concretely manifested in thousands of land grant records all over India.8 This phenomenon offers an explanation for many things in Indian history, though the causes, character and dimensions of the thing itself remain largely obscure. We find the evidence of its early impact in Sangam Tamil society, and since this is the only non-Aryan society which has left behind such a wealth of literary material from the remote past,9 this may also be considered crucial to the understanding of the land grant system in India as a whole. It is an acknowledged fact that Aryan brahmin influence acting through the caste system and the institution of the temple, produced a near-monopoly of land power for the brahmins and brahmin-supported states in the great agricultural production centres, i.e. the fertile river valleys of India, thus promoting the uniformity of Indian culture by inducing the same type of changes in tribal or semi-tribal structures of society and their ideological superstructure. We do not intend to go into the details of post-Sangam Tamil society but we take into account the studies of that later evidence made by ourselves and other scholars in formulating this interpretation of the struggle of the peasantry on the basis of earlier evidence.10 It is necessary to recognize at this stage that, in spite of detailed studies of ancient Tamilakam at the beginning of the Christian era, peasant life has not been subjected to scientific analysis and its vicissitudes have not been scrutinized properly.11 The peasant has been the underdog throughout early history and he has been subjugated and exploited because he has been the chief human agency for producing the items required for the maintenance of life. Ever since he emerged as a recognizable entity in ancient Tamilakam he was forcefully subordinated, first by the warlike Maravar groups from the less fertile regions in the neighbourhood, and then gradually by the immigrant land-owing brahmana groups in a more sophisticated manner as they aeted with the connivance of the former groups without employing directly the instruments of violence. The peasants voice has often been muffled, and his rights have been curtailed or completely removed. He did not occupy the centre of the stage where we find the fighting and ruling groups who lived in fortified capitals with the help of the surplus that the peasant produced. A little less visible were-the courtiers, agents and recipients of land grants with the supporting groups in handicrafts and trade. As these people have obscured the view of the peasant, the historian has to make a special