102 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 14. The account of Maraimalai Adigal's version of the Dravidian' ideology, which I present in the succeeding paragraphs, is based on his Vellalar Nagarigam, published first in 1923. It is not only one of his mature works, but also an extremely successful one. As he notes. The first edition of this work was published in November, 1923 and 500 copies of it were sold within four years—a period too short for the sale of a Tamil book of this kind which, in contradistinction to the current fashion for a mixed kind of Tamil prose, is written in a scrupulously pure Tamil style . . . ) Maraimalai Adigal, 1875a: 9). 15. Maraimalai Adigal occasionally floundered from his chosen epistemic path. For instance, explaining the destruction of early Tamil country (Kumari Nadu) by sea, he argued that it was due to divine wrath following the Tamils' excessive indulgence in earthly pleasures and wealth (Maraimalai Adigal, 1975b:68). After all, he, as a Saivite, had to defend the religious doctrines of Saivism! 16. Arguments developed in this section on how time was used as a distancing device owe a great deal to Fabian (1983). 17. During the Pallava period, the landed Vellala elites developed an overlap between Saivism and Tamil. This was achieved through the Bhakti literature of the Nayanmars and was meant to constitute a broad based historic block with the Vellalas at the leadership, so as to contest the well-entrenched authority of the hegemonic trading class. The trading class was mainly of Jains who promoted Sanskrit and Prakrit. Saivism acquired the trappings of a philosophical system, i.e., Saiva Siddhantam, during the Chola period when Vellalas were already a hegemonic class. For a brilliant analysis, see (Kailasapathy, 1991: 81-193). 18. Maraimalai Adigal was so detached from mass politics that he, in fact, dissuaded his sons from entering politics (Venkatachalapathy, 1988: 69-70 and 74). 19. For a detailed and exhaustively documented account of the ideological tussle between the Saivites and the Self Respecters, see (Venkatachalapathy, nd; and 1990). I have drawn most of the material in this section from his account which he has generously permitted me to use. 20. For a fuller account, see (Pandian, 1993). 21. One of the reasons which spurred Maraimalai Adigal to publish Vellalar Nagarigam was that the Nattukottai Chettiars derided the Vellalas as Sudras, and, in contrast, characterised themselves as Vaisyas (Maraimalai Adigal, 1975b: 6). In fact, the Vellalas had been contesting their Sudra identity from as early as 1871 (Thurston and Rangachari, 1975: 366-7). 22. The issue of women's freedom from patriarchy was a life long engagement for E.V. Ramaswamy. For details, see (Anandhi, 1991 and 1992; and Pickering, 1993). BIBLIOGRAPHY Aanaimutthu, V., (1974), Periyar Ee Ve Ra Sinthanaikal, Vols. I, II and III, Thinkers Forum, Tiruchirapalli, (in Tamil). Ahmad, Aijaz, (1993), In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, Oxford University Press, Bombay. Anandhi S., (1991) 'Women's Question in the Dravidian Movement, 1925-48', Social Scientist, May-June, ____________. (1992), Middle Class Women in Colonial Tamilnadu, 1920-47: Gender Relations and the Problems of Consciousness, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis).