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This thesis is an analytic study of specific patterns of religious thought in early south India as found in the earliest extant literary texts in Tamil, one of the classical languages of India and one of the oldest living languages of the world. commonly known in the Tamil tradition as the cankaa literature, this corpus of poetry is generally assigned to the early centuries of the Comaon Era, and is thought of as constituting the classical heritage of Taail culture. There has not been a major attempt to investigate the importance of this reaarkable body of literature to the development of religious thought in south India, a region which is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of a number of religious movements including the great devotional govement of the early medieval ties, called the bhaktl religion. The reluctance on the part of historians of Indian religious thought to take up the study of classical Tamil texts was partly due to a perception that the classical Tamil texts were essentially 'secular', and, therefore, of not much interest to a historian of religious thought. I had, therefore, to begin the thesis with a historiographical critique showing how limited and limiting that perception was and suggesting that, whatever unique features that classical Tamil texts may have, they are not unyielding to the queries of a student of religion. In addition to other types of poems, there are a few explicitly religious poems which are regarded by tradition as part of the classical corpus. Taking my initial cues from those poems, I have isolated three central themes in the literature, namely space, hero, and gift around which the religious thought of the culture can be discerned. By a careful and selective analysis of the so-called 'secular' poems in the corpus, and through an analysis of sections of the major grammatical treatise of the classical period, have shown that the thought underlying these three themes was integral to classical Tamil culture. The thesis has in the end a dual purpose. Its stated purpose is to assess the importance of the period of the classical Tamil texts in religious history, but it also indirectly demonstrates the need for a fresh approach to the study of early Tamil literature. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this study, a macroeconometric model of the Indian economy is constructed and estimated for the period 1957-1976. The model is evaluated in terms of its ability to forecast major endogenous variables through historic simulation, and is then used in a set of experiments to examine the short and long period effects of changes in various important exogenous variables. The model is growth-oriented, and focuses on the process of capital accumulation which is, amongst other things, an important determinant of growth in laboursurplus economies such as India. Supply factors play a major role in determining capital formation and output. Thus, the constraint imposed by the availability of resources -viz., saving and capital imports -is an important factor in the process of capital accumulation. Keynesian-type demand phenomena play a minor role in determining output. The forces of demand, however, are involved in determining prices which partly determine real resource supplies, which in turn, affect the rate of capital formation and hence the growth rate of output. In order to articulate important institutional and economic characteristics of the economy, the role of the government sector in the process of accumulation is separately and endogenously examined, the economy is disaggregated into four major sectors and the process of capital accumulation and other determinants of sectoral output are separately analysed. The sectoral rates of capital formation are determined within the context of an overall constraint on aggregate capital formation imposed by the real volume of resources -viz. , saving and foreign capital. The study also attempts to look at some additional aspects of foreign capital. Thus, one question that is examined is whether foreign resource inflows adversely affect the domestic resource mobilization effort -viz. , the saving effort (of the government) for a given level and structure of taxation, prices and income, ana/or the taxation effort itself. Further, a sub-motiel of the foodgrains sector is constructed and integrated with the rest of the system to examine specific as well as economywide effects of Public Law (PL 480) foodgrain aid to India. Of interest are the effects on foodgrain and agricultural output and investment, as well on output in other sectors. To deal with the simultaneity problem the model is estimated by a two-stage procedure based on principal components. The tracking ability of the model is found to be reasonably good in respect of major endogenous variables. There is some evidence of weak (adverse) effects of foreign resource inflows on government saving, though no such evidence is found for the tax effort. PL 480 foodgrain aid is found to be a less-than-perfect substitute for commercial foodgrain imports, thereby implying that there is some foreign exchange saving implicit in each unit of PL 480 imports. Our simulation experiments suggest that an increase in foreign capital inflows over a short period have only temporary favourable effects on the growth rate of the economy though the time-path of national output is permanently raised. Moderate increases in foreign capital inflows sustained over a longer period, merely raise the time-path of output but have no significant effects on the rate of growth. Reduced PL 480 aid compensated by increased foreign exchange aid has favourable effects on foodgrain and agricultural output, as well as on national income. If there is no compensating increase in foreign exchange aid, but a corresponding decline in capital transfers to the government, there are economy-wide contractionary effects. In both cases, ther supply of foodgrains in the economy is adversely affected. Other simulation experiments suggest the presence of the ''Please Effect" in that increased direct taxation leaves the aggregate volume of saving unchanged, while increased government spending based on money creation is largely absorbed through rising prices. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

An analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) was done with the primary goal of clarifying the relationship of the Indian population to world populations. Phylogenetically informative RFLP sites were amplified, restricted and scored for 187 Indian-descended individuals. This sample collectively represented a geographically wide distribution, the three main religions present in the subcontinent, and three main caste groups. Thirteen haplotypes were found in the Indian population, and when combined with world population data obtained from the literature, 41 different haplotypes were found. India was found to be significantly different from all world populations under study. In agreement with previously reported results, the Indian population was found to be more similar to European populations than south-east Asian populations, with all Indian populations sharing the European-associated haplotypes 14 and 15 at high frequencies. However, high frequencies of haplotype 30 implied similarity with the Evenk population of Siberia, suggesting a possible north-central Asian origin for the Dravidian and/or Indo-Aryan migration into India. Significant geographical differentiation within India was found, with north-western India having significantly higher frequencies of haplotypes 14 and 15 than Southern India, and lower frequencies of the Evenk-associated haplotype 30. The northwest was also significantly more diverse than other regions of India, most likely due to its location on the main routes of repeated migration into India. Significant differences between religious groups were found to have a geographical basis, while caste groups were undifferentiated from each other and the main religious groups. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

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