While bird and beast are happy, these but stimulate him to redouble his efforts to reach home at the earliest opportunity. On his journey's way he sees the flowers fall away from the trees. It reminds him of the possibility, this is one of the characteristic exaggerations to be met in Cankam poetry, of the bangles that should be dropping away from the arms of his beloved because of the slimness to which she has been reduced as a result of his absence.²⁴ His coming is awaited. His lady has watchers who report to her that the chariot is on its way. She yet hesitates to give the report full credence, but she is assured that they have seen it from the "mullai covered mound.^"25

The poem of Napuutanaar in the Pattuppaaṭṭu collection is the longest mullai poem we have. It consists of 103 lines, and contains within itself a compendium of ideas and similes appropriate to a mullai poem, and to its opposite division in puṛam poetry, vañci. The heroine lives in a country villa surrounded by the flora and fauna appropriate to the region, while her lord, the Paaṇṭiyan King Neṭuñceliyan, the hero of Talaiyaalangaanam, is in his encampment in the field of battle. The heroine's queenly bearing of her sorrow, the suppressed tears, the comfort and solace that her ladies-in-waiting endeavour to give her, and in the closing lines the green and flowery mantle with which the rainy season has covered the earth, are described with the masterly strokes of both a portrait and landscape painter.²⁶

Exhaustive pen-pictures of the shepherd's life like those found in Theocritus or Vergil are few, but the few passages which Cankam poetry contains are striking, and show an appreciation of the shepherd's life and his contribution to society. A poem in the Naṛṛiṇai collection (142) contains a vivid reference to the shepherd in the rain. He has a leathern case hung across his shoulders. It contains his apparatus for obtaining fire. A mat across his body protects him partially from the rain. On a short staff meant to urge the sheep, he rests one leg and as he sees his sheep likely to wander away from

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   ²⁶ SWAMI VEDACHALAM, A Critical Tamil Commentary on Mullaippaattu (Tm), Pallavaram, 1931.