usibly urged that he was an active adversary of the Buddhists, that
tradition is unanimous in regarding him as earlier than the writers of
the Devaram[544] who make references (not however indisputable) to his
poem, and that Perisiriyar, who commented on it, lived about 700 A.D.
I confess that the tone and sentiments of the poem seem to me what one
would expect in the eleventh rather than in the third century: it has
something of the same emotional quality as the Gita-govinda and the
Bhagavata-purana, though it differs from them in doctrine and in its
more masculine devotion. But the Dravidians are not of the same race
as the northern Hindus and since this ecstatic monotheism is clearly
characteristic of their literature, it may have made its appearance in
the south earlier than elsewhere.

The Tiruvacagam is not unorthodox but it deals direct with God and is
somewhat heedless of priests. This feature becomes more noticeable in
other authors such as Pattanattu Pillai, Kapilar and the Telugu
poet Vemana. The first named appears to have lived in the tenth
century. The other two are legendary figures to whom anthologies of
popular gnomic verses are ascribed and some of those attributed to
Kapilar are probably ancient. In all this poetry there rings out a
note of almost defiant monotheism, iconoclasm and antisacerdotalism.
It may be partly explained by the fact that in the south Brahmanism
was preceded, or at least from early times accompanied, by Buddhism
and Jainism. These creeds did not make a conquest, for the Dravidian
temperament obviously needed a god who could receive and reward
passionate devotion, but they cleared the air and spread such ideas as
the superiority of good deeds to rites and the uselessness of priests.
Even now verses expressing these thoughts are popular in the Madras
Presidency, but the sect which produced them, known as the
Sittars,[545] is entirely extinct. Caldwell attributes its literature
to the seventeenth century, but the evidence available is small and it
is clear that this theistic anti-brahmanic school had a long life. As
in other cases, the Brahmans did not suppress so much as adapt it. The
collection which goes by the name of Siva-vakyam contains poems of
different ages and styles. Some are orthodox, others have no trace of
Brahmanism except the use of Siva as the name of the deity. Yet it
would seem that the anthology as a whole has not fallen under
sacerdotal censure.[546]

The impo