This is a story from about three hundred years ago. At that time, Tamil Nadu had no boundaries, not even a name. People lived in different groups in dense forests, riverbanks, alluvial lands, barren deserts, coastal areas, and mountain peaks, each according to their own tribal customs. There was no king or kingdom. There was only a tribal leader who guided the tribes.
There were more than a hundred human groups thriving in the five types of land - Kurinji, Mullai, Marudam, Neithal, and Paalai - each with its own unique identity. Life was in harmony with nature. Needs were the only desires and dreams. Labor and produce were common property. Celebration and joy were reflections of nature. All humans were equal. The only natural division was that of gender - male and female.
While men hunted and roasted the meat on fire, women in the cave boiled water during their leisure time and cooked the meat in it. They changed to a state where they could eat meat and tubers without roasting them on fire. They created a new type of food called cooked food.
From that day on, the food cooked in fire was named "male food" and the food cooked in water was named "female food." Man became the symbol of haste, and woman became the symbol of maturity. They concluded that everything, food, plants, animals, birds, mountains, and rivers, was both male and female like themselves.
All the wonders of nature begin with the fascination for the opposite sex. They are the fountainhead of all new energies. Nature's dynamism is contained within love. The two forces, male and female, contain within themselves the primordial secrets that can never be fully understood by each other. Like water and earth, man and woman can merge into each other in an instant and separate from each other in the next. That is their nature. In living beings, nature created only this division. There were no other divisions, and that time was beautiful and peaceful. But that peace did not last long. It began to crumble slowly.
Just as a single brick is the cause of the collapse of a large mansion, so is wealth and the desire for wealth. When it began as one's own property, a store for one's offspring, the peace of the clans began to crumble, inequalities arose, the strong in the clans prevailed, and power rested in the hands of the powerful. The strengthened clan wanted to subdue other clans. Hundreds of clans across Tamil Nadu began to clash with each other. Like the incessant thunder in the dense forest, the sound of those clashes continued to sound. Blood flowed like a river for centuries without stopping.
In the early days, the greatest wealth for humans was livestock. Therefore, all clans desired to increase their livestock. The livestock of the next clan were stolen overnight. The thief fled with weapons. Between the driven livestock and the livestock that returned, humans kept falling dead.
Next, the clans clashed to capture good agricultural lands. Wherever there were fertile lands, human blood did not dry up all year round. The act that started as a fight for stealing livestock now evolved into wars. One war gave birth to another. In the early days, the warriors of the defeated country were killed. But not now. Their hands and labor were needed for the new government. So, they were enslaved and put under the yoke. The victor plowed the land of the fallen with a sword. They were praised as "the offspring of those who eat the land of others."
The growing needs and sea trade demanded countless slaves every day. The war that began for land now became one for obtaining slaves. Countless clans fell into the permanent boiling cauldron of war, clashed with each other, killed and digested each other. The remaining ones rose.
The ascendants announced that they were no longer clan leaders but kings. The cry of "Long live the new kings" resounded in two-thirds of the land. Sages created unique identities for the king. The jeweled crown, the royal drum, the white victory umbrella, and the royal wheel were for the kings. They declared that kings meant only the Chera, Chola, and P