scale in the story of Tamil love. The poets idealize the spots on which lovers meet. The first meeting as developed in Iṛaiyanaar Akapporuḷ where Nature’s setting is most picturesque for the drama of love, is but a development of or a composition of several such scenes in Cankam literature. One of the conventional situations in which lovers meet is when the heroine is out in the open gathering veenkai flowers together with her young companions. It was the custom among children to shout out “Tiger, Tiger” in the childish belief that the veenkai would lower its branches within reach for them to pluck its flowers, The colour of the veenkai flower which resembles that of the tiger was the cause of the origin of this cry. A heroine, with her companions, plays about the veenkai with shouts of “Tiger, Tiger”. A young chief who is out hunting hears the cry and hastens to the place of the alarm. “Where has fled the tiger”? he queries in anxiety. The girls hide one behind the other in shyness. “Is it possible that falsehood emanates even from lips such as yours”? he pointedly remarks and hastens away, but not before his eyes have met the eyes of the heroine and spoken with her in the language of the eyes,²⁷

   The veenkai tree is closely associated in poetry with love in the mountain region. It presents a very pleasing sight when in bloom with its golden bunches of blossoms “as finely wrought as the workmanship of the cleverest jeweller.” Often its flowers are compared to flames of fire. Its petals strewn on a rock below the tree remind the poet, because of their colour, of a tiger asleep.²⁸ Its flowering season was considered to be auspicious and was set apart for the public celebration of weddings, and betrothed couples awaited eagerly for it to burst into flower.²⁹ There is room to believe that at first, marriages were celebrated under the flowering veenkai, because it was the shadiest and loveliest tree of the region. Hence its flowering was understood to introduce auspicious days for lovers.

In many a poem the maid urges the hero to celebrate the public wedding now that the veenkai has bloomed, or she consoles her mistress saying now that the veenkai has flowered,

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   ²⁹Pari; 14, 11-12; Akam; 12.