Climate and Imagery

The language of Tamil poetry, its figures of speech and imagery, bear the stamp of the land and the climate in which they were coined. The South Indian climate (if you except the highest hills for a few months) never too cold to exclude the possibility of outdoor life and enjoyment, promoted an intimate life with Nature in the open. So did also the heat of the warmer months, when relief was to be found only under the shade of trees with the breeze freely blowing, or within the cool waters of a tank over-covered by the branches of marutam trees. The poems describing the regions of the Tamil country show the people as dancing under the bowers, as holding their village meetings and deliberations under umbrageous trees, as feasting in the open, as indulging in the pleasure that only those in warm climates know in bathing in tanks and rivers and the sea, as decorating themselves even in daily life with garlands and leaves, in short, living a close and intimate life with Nature. An unsophisticated spontaneity like that which Vergil attributes to his shepherds passing their days in endless song in the grasses of the Roman campagna, may be seen in the lives of the people of Tamil Naad as depicted sometimes by their poets.

It is again the climate which accounts for the prominence given in Tamil poetry to certain seasons of the year and certain periods of the day. Among the six seasons, both kaar (rainy season) and mutu veenil (late spring or summer) seem to have engaged more attention on the part of poets, for this reason that the former was eagerly awaited after the spell of warm weather and cultivation was so much dependent on rainfall, and the latter made itself felt by bringing with it extremely unpleasant weather. It is but natural that the noonday heat, as well as the restfulness of evening came in for comment by those interested in the weather, and hence the midday, the evening, and the sundown with its attendant gloaming, are conspicuously treated in Nature poetry. Besides, these periods of the day were reserved for certain emotional experiences for which the poets had a preference.

Extreme heat is deprecated in all literatures, but in European