offers me with devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit, and water, I receive that, offered in devotion by the person whose soul is disciplined." There is no Jupiter for the early Tamils who hurls thunderbolts, though they would admit that thunder rolls like victoria ous drums; there is no Aeolus who strives to keep the winds in check, though they would admit that horses seem to fly like the wind and that the wind carries the fragrance of the hills; there is no Neptune who rises above the waves with the trident, though they see in the white foam the silvery air of people advanced in age. The Sanskrit epics contain a great many references to the use of flowers and garlands, for the purpose of adorning one's person, or to decorate a festive house or city, but flowers and garlands are not used to the same extent or with the kind of significance and symbolism which the Cankam age attaches to garlands and flowers. There is a relish in epic verse in the sound of the names of trees and flowers as found in Kapilar and the Kali odes or in Vergil. The hundred and eight names of the sun given in the Nalopākhyāna and the hymn to the sun sung by Yudhiṣṭhira are indications of the delight a people inhabiting colder regions took in the sun, in the same manner the Tamils delighted in the shade. Neither fire nor shelter, nor woollen clothes give greater comfort to one suffering from chilling blasts than thy rays, O Sun. |
Damayanti is asked by the ascetics whether 'she is the presiding deity of the forest, or of the mountain or stream'. She addresses a beautiful aśoka tree in the forest and bids it find Nala for her. The descriptions of mountains, forests and streams in the epics are full of a deep and abiding feeling for them, especially when described as the homes of ascetics and exiled princes, circumstances of which Cankam poetry is conspicuously devoid. Nature's sympathy with Sītā and Rāma in ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ nothing but a Dravidian pu "flower" plus root + ge "to do" (palatalized to je), which is found in Tamil as chey, in Kannada as ge and in Telugu as che. Puja pu-ge, pu-je, pu-che was thus a "flower ritual", a "flower service", a pushpa-karma, just as homa was described as pasukarma or religious service entailing the slaughter of an animal". |
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