Saturday, November 28, 2009

SOCIETY

SOCIETY According to Romila Thapar, the centre of social and economic life at the time, particularly in the rural areas, was the temple. Devadasis were commonly found in most temples in Chola times.

Caste-consciousness had become prominent in social relationships. The brahmans maintained a distinctness, but unlike the north Indian brahman landowners, the southern brahmans were more adventurous. Their surplus income went into commerce. Slavery was common, but the use of slave labour for large-scale production was not known. The society was mainly divided into brahmans and non­brahmans. Among the non-brahmans there is, as compared to North India, little mention of. kshatriyas and vaishyas but the shudras are prominent. The brahmans were in control of the powerful positions and the non-brahmans were more or less working for them. Amongst the inter­mediary castes the distinctions were perhaps not so rigid.

The temple continued to be the centre of formal education in Sanskrit, with colleges attached to the larger temples. Some of these colleges were those at Ennayiram, Tribhuvani, TIruvaduturai, and Tiruvorriyur. The medium of instruction was Sanskrit almost to the exclusion of Tamil, and so formal education, and the life of most students attending the colleges, became cut off from everyday life. Professional education continued to be maintained through training given to apprentices in guilds and among groups of artisans. However, oral instruction, much simpler than the Sanskrit learning of the colleges, was imparted through the medium of the Saivite and Vaishnavite hymns com­posed by the Tamil saints.

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