These poems present faithful portraits of the social, economic, political, and literary state of the Tamil country, the two centuries before and after Christ. A good portion of the literary legislation of Tolkaappiyam regarding Nature as the background of poetry is illustrated by these poems. The Tolkaappiyam and these poems which collectively are often referred to as Cankam Literature, are the texts used for the present study.8 The Ten Idylls contain lengthy and picturesque descriptions of the Tamil country and its seasons. Most of them are in the form of Aaṛṛuppaṭai,a literary device by which a bard or a minstrel who has received bountiful gifts from some wealthy patron is supposed to direct another to the same Maecenas.9 This gives the occasion to the poet, among other topics, to describe in great detail the natural beauty, fertility, and resources of the territory which has to be traversed to reach the palace of the patron. These poems which are in the nature of guide-books and travelogues adopt a more credible and realistic device than those Tamil poems of a later age which utilize inanimate objects like the cloud and the wind as messengers or the media of poetic observation. The Aaṛṛuppaṭaiis of a piece with Tamil realism and describes the journey as experienced by a human traveller, and that on terra firma. Each of the Ten Idylls contains passages relevant to the theme of Nature. The first poem on the god, Murukan, contains descriptions of the natural beauty of spots most beloved by him, of his immanent presence in Nature, and of the flowers, trees and animals sacred to him. Minute and interesting ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8T. 1037, see General Introduction of Pattuppaattu translated by J. V.CHELLIAH, Colombo. V. R.RAMACHANDRA DIKSHITHAR, Studies in Tamil Literature and History, 1946, pp. 21-85, London, 1930. 9The term “Cankam literature” is very widely used among the Tamils to designate their ancient books written prior to, say, the third century of the Christian era. The word Cankam here stands for ‘Literary Academy’ and these books are the works of poets who lived at a period when the activities of a literary body regulated and set the standards for Tamil literature. The persistent Tamil tradition speaks of three academies, the first two of which were succeeded by geological upheavals that caused the loss also of the literature of those epochs. What has remained are mostly the books of the third epoch or of the third academy, and now “Cankam” has by degrees come to mean par excellence the third academy and the third epoch. |