A History of India, Third Edition

THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES

The third ecotype, the dry, barren land (palai) was a transitional zone
which often expanded in great droughts. This was a region to which
robbers would withdraw and was thus feared by travellers.
The most important of the five types was the fourth one, the river
valleys (marutam). Natural and artificial irrigation by means of canals,
tanks and wells made rice cultivation possible in this area. Artisans and
settled agriculturists, like the caste of the Vellalas, lived here and later the
kings settled Brahmins in this fertile region who established whole Brahmin
villages. These villages were usually located in the region which is below
300 feet above sea level. These river valleys with their well-developed
agriculture and high population were the nuclear areas which formed the
base of all regional kingdoms of South India.
The fifth eco-type, the coast (neytal) was an area where the people made
a living by fishing, trading and making salt. Local trade consisted initially
only of exchanging fish and salt for rice and milk products, but in the first
centuries AD international maritime trade became more and more
important for the coastal people. This is why both literary and
archaeological evidence point to a higher degree of urbanisation in the
coastal region than in the river valleys in this early period.
Sangam literature, just like late Vedic and early Buddhist literature,
reflects the transition from tribal society to settled agriculture and early
state formation. Even at this very early stage, social stratification in the
river valleys of South India shows traces of a caste system which then
becomes increasingly rigid as Brahmin immigrants gain more and more
influence and provide the justification for it. But in the early times, even
the higher castes were not yet hemmed in by the rigid norms and
conventions of a later age. The Sangam texts contain vivid descriptions of
the uninhibited life in the early capitals of South Indian rulers, particularly
in the Pandya capital, Madurai.
The political development of South India was greatly stimulated by the
contact with the first great Indian empire of the Mauryas in the third
century BC. The tribal rulers of the South thus gained an insight into new
types of administration and large-scale state formation. Trade with North
India added to this flow of information and so did the migration of
Buddhist and Jaina monks who introduced their forms of monastic
organisation in Central and South India. Interregional trade and these
highly developed monastic institutions often maintained a symbiotic
relationship which was of great importance for the emergence of the
political infrastructure of these early states of the South.

Kharavela of Orissa and the Andhra Shatavahanas

The history of Central and South India in the centuries after the death of
Ashoka is still relatively unknown. Thus the dating of the two major