destroying an enemy country would burn all these fields and sow thistles and briars, the Tamil substitute for the Roman use of salt in the fields of Carthage after the battle of Zama. The harvest over, the sheaves or the hay were stacked so high as to resemble hillocks. The sugar-cane reed is frequently compared as was natural among a warring people to spears and lances. Its flowers are said to toss in the wind like the horse's mane. The court poetry of Pattuppaaṭṭu has references to the Marutam tracts, and the Puṛanaanuuṛu contains many statements on agriculture and the farmer as forming the backbone and main-stay of a State. In describing a peaceful reign, a poet addresses a sovereign saying that his subjects know of no bow other than the rainbow and no weapon other than the ploughshare.43 The aspect of love special to the marutam region is "lover's quarrels", or to be more exact, the wife's irritability and sulkiness. These quarrels which are said to be the renewal of love are due, according to the poets, because of the husband's incurring the displeasure of his wife, for faults real or imagined, committed against marital fidelity. Most of the Tamil cities were located in the riverine plains, and there seems to have been at the time a surplus population of women.44 Courtezans were a perennial danger to marital harmony, and the poems of the marutam region depict the heroine's doubts and suspicions, the hero's repentance, his seeking reconciliation with his wife through the mediation of his companion or the wife's maid, the wife pining in her sorrow, her forgiveness and patience, and reconciliation effected through the common love of their children. The laxity prevailing elsewhere may illustrate a feature of the urbanized culture in the Tamil country. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Among the wealthier inhabitants of the larger cities 'fast sets' were formed which no doubt merited the strictures of contemporary moralists and satirists, and the chief centres of traffic contained the usual under-world population. A particularly insidious danger grew up out of the institution of slavery, which offered innumerable opportunities to those lacking in self-control, and served to perpetuate laxities in the moral code. A considerable number of female slaves in the Greek |
43Puram; 20, 10-11. | 44Lectures on Kalittokai (Tm), p. 78. |
|