A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.68

c12.68

Internal trade was also brisk; caravans of merchants with carts and pack-animals carried their merchandise from place to place and from fair to fair. Salt was an important commodity of trade and salt-merchants moved with their families in carts provided with spare axles against contingencies. Barter played a large part in all transactions; honey and roots, for example, might be exchanged for fish-oil and toddy, and sugar-cane and aval (rice-flakes) for venison and arrack, while in Muśiri fish was sold for paddy. Agriculture was the mainstay of the national economy, and most of its operations were carried on by women of the lowest class (kaḍaiśiyar) whose status appears to have differed little from that of the slave. The bulk of the land was owned by veḷḷāḷar, the agriculturists par excellence, who commanded a high social rank. The richer among them did not plough the land themselves, but employed labourers to do it. Besides owning land, they held official posts in the civil and military administration, and the titles veḷ and araśu in the Chola country and kāvidi in the Pāndya were applied to them. They not only enjoyed the jus connubii with royal families, but shared with the king the duties of war and the pleasures of the chase and of the table. The poorer veḷḷālar did not shun manual labour, but worked on their own small farms, as do the peasantry everywhere. Spinning and weaving of cotton, and perhaps also of silk, had attained a high degree of perfection. Spinning was then, as always, the part-time occupation of women. The weaving of complex patterns on cloth and silk is often mentioned in literature and, according to the Periplus, Uraiyūr was a great centre of the cotton trade. The poems mention cotton cloth as thin as the slough of the snake or a cloud of steam, so finely woven that the eye could not follow the course of the thread. Scissors and needles were known and employed in cutting hair and in dress-making; a kind of hair pomade (tagaram) is mentioned also.