Hitherto I consoled myself by gazing at his hill. But now that it is evening, his hill seems to disappear gradually like a ship that sinks at sea. Hence I am inconsolable.37
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Again to a maid who wonders if her mistress would be able to support the grief of separation, the mistress says: Look at my forehead. The effect of sorrow is no more there. The reason is that I have beheld his hill washed by heavy rain, where groups of peacocks cry in the thick groves, and where the pale-monkeys and their little ones shiver with cold.38
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Nature has the objects with which the heroine consoles herself during the absence of her lover. There is a little stanza of Avvai, which is significant in its suggestion regarding the love a heroine has for the hill associated with her lover. The heroine is found to be of poor health by her parents. The mother seeks a woman-diviner to find out the cause. The diviner divines with grains of paddy, and with the help of prayer to the gods announces the cause of her illness, namely, that it comes from Murukan, the god of the hills, and that he must be appeased with the dance sacred to him. To such a diviner occupied in her divination with the grains of paddy, the maid says, “sing not of the gods, but sing the song of his hill that you have been singing”, so that the parents might understand that she is love-sick. Maid of the long call, maid of the sacred call,
Maid with beauteous hair, white like stringed shells,
Sing that song-do sing that song again,
The song that sings of his grand and lofty hill.39
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While arrangements are being made for the heroine’s wedding, the maid observes to the heroine that she has bravely borne the pangs of separation. To her the heroine replies that she was able to do so because of the comfort she has derived from a gloriosa superba plant washed down stream from the hill of her lover by the night’s rain. She took it in her hands, fondly kissed it many times because it came from her lover’s hill, and planted it in her own garden. The sight of that plant ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 37Kur; 240. | 38Kur; 249. | 39 Kur; 23. |
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