392 THE KINGDOMS OF THE SOUTH

the Pallava kings, with whom the Palli caste, as well as the Kallar, boasts a connection. The latter caste exercised, during the eighteenth century, a formidable control over the peaceable inhabitants of the Carnatic, from whom its members levied blackmail on a regular system, and so probably continued the practice which had made the Pallavas a terror to their neighbours in the early centuries of the Christian era.