Social Formations of Early South India Book

Introduction Conceptual preliminaries 1

1 Early social formations : a historiographical review 23

2 The course of social historiography of Kerala 59

3 Semiotics of ancient Tamil poetics : a methodological consideration 77

4 Prehistoric life in the southern Western Ghats : interpreting rock-art 95

5 Tribes, forest, and social formation in early South India 121

6 Forms of production and forces of change in ancient Tamil society 136

7 Early Iron Age economy : problems of agrarian expansion in Tamilakam 155

8 Writing, literacy, and social formations in the Tamil South 166

9 Towards a new discourse : discursive processes in early South India 182

10 Social formation from the ancient to early medieval 205

11 Historical antecedents of the state formation in the deep South 224

12 Aspects of great transformation in ancient Kerala 242

13 From clan and lineage to hereditary occupations and caste 255

14 Spread of writing in the Tamil South and its social implications 272

15 Temples as sites of the new social formation 291

16 The formation of caste society in Kerala historical antecedents 306

17 Aspects of the reservoir system of irrigation in the Pandya country 320

Index 340