Nature in South India may be said to be accurate or complete without a visit to the Western Ghats, the Nilgris, or Kodaikaanal, and to the long strip of luscious greenery and backwater between the frontier mountains of Travancore-Cochin and the Arabian Sea. Except for the absence of snow, South India is representative of a great range of climate and terrainy.6 The diversified landscape of South India is in striking contrast with that of Northern India where the low river valleys form an unending monotonous feature. When one compares the Nature poetry of Kālidāsa with the Cankam poetry of the Tamils, one is in a position to understand how in India itself the different geographical features and climatic conditions obtaining in the North and the South, have been responsible for a difference of outlook regarding the concept and interpretation of Landscape. The Language The names of flowers and trees have been used to the utmost advantage by the Tamil poets to lend music to their verse which, like Greek and Latin, is based on quantity. They took full advantage of the names, and as in Vergil, there are entire lines which are but strings of names, resounding musical lines; “lines pulsing with the incomparable joy of the born poet in the joy of the singing, the sonorous word, a delight which is the first requisite of his work of art; lines that spring from this most sensuous, most indispensable, element to flower in the magic of ‘names’ which in their turn derive from the spiritual might of man from his faculty to give names to persons and to things”.7 Tamil has not the ceremonial pomp of Latin, but the names, contain such a wealth of vocalic sounds, that their concatenation in poetic lines has a most pleasing effect. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6 Complete accounts of the land and the flora and fauna of the various civil districts (e.g., Tinnevelly, Maturai, Nilgris) are to be found in the Gazetteers published by the Government. For Kerala, the State Manual provides similar information and exhaustive descriptions. 7THEODOR HAECKER, Vergil, p. 43, London, 1934. |