lines do occur when the material beauty of the universe is expressed with the freshness of Keats and the keen observation of a Vergil or Tennyson, but these lines are never without relation to man. However, in Tamil poetry occur certain conventions which are the remains and echoes of a very primitive and distant age when there was less faith in the interaction of Nature and humanity, though there was more of immediate contact with Nature. What was actually a mode of life later became a custom, and finally crystallized into a hallowed poetic convention which was followed in poetry even when the custom became obsolete. A lover is depicted, for instance, in ancient poetry as presenting his beloved with garments of leaves, or of garments interwoven with leaves and flowers, to be worn round about the waist over whatever clothes she may wear. Such leafy garments were also given as gifts on ceremonial occasions or as symbols of friendship and hospitality and worn on days of social rejoicing.7 It is likely that this custom was but the relic of a time centuries earlier, when cotton fabrics were unknown and the primitive folk covered themselves only with leaves. There are also references to the ritual of marriage taking place under the spreading shade of a veenkai tree in full bloom.8 There are, on the other hand, indications that the wedding ritual at this time was performed under a temporary hall erected in front of the house.9 This mode of marriage under a flowering veenkai is just a poetic convention, but a convention that points out to an earlier period when life was more primitive, and trees were the actual temples and halls of the population, and when marriages did actually take place under arboreal shades. Husking paddy and other cereals are said to be done in the open with the cavities which Nature has made in rocks as mortars, and the tusks of elephants or sandalwood branches as pestles.10 At the time of the composition of the poem the Tamils had mortars and pestles in their homes, but ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7 Kur; 125, 214, 295; Puram; 248; Nar; 170, 320; Aink; 72, 73; Kurinci 103. 8Kali; 39, 33 ff. Veenkai is the Indian Kino. 9Akam; 86, 3; cf. Akam; 156. 10Kali; 41, 1-4; cfr. Kali; 40, 1-4. |