analogy to the poetry; tier upon tier of carved stone crowded with detail, placed one upon another to form the mighty whole, the gopuram. Similarly the Tamil poem is one connected whole. Even in the longest of the ancient poems, the entire poem forms, as if it were, one statement according to English grammar, with innumerable subordinate clauses and just one main clause to give it unity and connection. Within these subordinate clauses occur phrases, and within these phrases adjectives, and linked to these adjectives are nouns. The poet who wishes to say that the heroine was standing under a tree, would state in separate clauses or phrases the location of the tree, the kind of flowers or leaves that it bore, the bees that frequented these flowers, the colour or size of the stem, and many other details, maddening perhaps to those trained in the relative simplicity of modern English literature fostered by the English landscape, but not maddening to those who are used to the Tamil Fine Arts fostered by the Tamil landscape. Compare the Parthenon with the temple-gopurams of Conjeevaram or of Chidambaram and you will note the difference in outlook between the Greek and the Tamil.1 As we mount further in time to classical antiquity the resemblances in literature are greater. It is easier to compare a Kali ode with an eclogue of Vergil than with a pastoral poem of Wordsworth. It was for want of sufficient comprehension of the difference in outlook that Ruskin erred egregiously in his judgments on Indian Art, and it was because she was endowed with that comprehension that the intellectual and sensitive critic Alice Meynell was able to appreciate it.2 Nothing is more natural than that there should be more ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 The writer admits the classic simplicity of Pallava art. 2 ALICE MEYNELL, Essays, London, 1925, p. 152 ff; Cr. C. E. ROBINSON, Zitto Hellas, London, 1946, p. 182: "No where can this principle be more clearly observed than in the Greek's own language-always a faithful mirror of a people's mentality. In style and structure Greek linguistic methods were a complete contrast to our own. The easy-going, loose-minded Englishman will express his ideas in a series of independent sentences ranged side by side, as it might be a row of single-room huts. The Greek preferred to build a more complex and more comprehensive edifice. Viewing a group of ideas as a logical unity, he would bring them all together into one long period in which through the subordination of clause to clause he was able to bring out explicitly the |