ROLE OF PEASANTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF TAMILAKAM 19 effort to discover him and follow the course of his continuous and laborious struggle through life. PEASANT SETTLEMENTS OF THE SANGAM AGE Sangam poetry conveys a vivid idea about five types of ecological-cultural regions, each with its own distinct occupational pattern and corresponding forms of worship, customs and manners, and even preference for moods and forms in literature.12 Of these the Marutam regions were the fertile agricultural tracts along the fertile river valleys with prosperous villages known as Ur inhabited by peasants called Ulavar, Vellalar etc. in literature.13 The terms Ulavar literally means ploughmen14 and the term Vellalar literally means masters of the soil indicating possession of land rather than work on other's land for wages.15 They had their chiefs called Kilavar or Talaivar who owned the village which was either gifted or patronized by a greater chief called Vendan or Araican—this latter word is the Tamil form of Raj an in Sanskrit—in contemporary literature.16 The Kilavar were obliged to go to war in support of the Vendor17 They shared the spoils of war in the form of booty and occasionaly received the grant of villages as reward of distinguished military service.18 The Pur am songs give us the impression that the settlement of new agricultural villages, through the conversion of kadu and nadu under the patronage of the Vendor went on continuously, though any attempt to quantify the same on the basis of bardic accounts would be quite arbitrary.19 A large number of poems mention the practice of the chief granting Ur to the panar (traditional nomadic bards), Brahmanar (Vedic sacrificial priests) and the Maravar (tribal warlike bands).20 The gifts are often made in the form of clothes, food, gold ornaments, elephants and chariots, but occasionally they take the shape of villages21 The gift of a village might be taken to mean the nomination of a person as the Kilavar (chief) and the agent of the Vendor (king) in that place. Thus it may be inferred that people drawn from different ethnic and professional groups were being transformed into land-owning cultivators in course of time.22 Even though the incidents and situations described by the poets may not be historical, or may be partly historical and partly imaginary, the authenticity of the practice cannot easily be questioned, since it is mentioned by several poets hailing from different places and celebrating a variety of themes. The present writer agrees that the very conventionalism of these traditional bards highlighted by Kailasapathy in his famous discussion of Tamil Aeroic poetry must be derived from, and based on, social reality at some stage. It must have a reference point somewhere, but as it is not located in earlier Sanskrit works it can only be attributed to the historical reality in contemporary Tamil society including society of a .slightly older age.24 Incidentally, this argument is