truthfulness of observation have become proverbial in literary criticism in this country. The Western critic accustomed to the more recent literature of Tamil or Sanskrit is apt to consider the language of Oriental poetry highly exaggerated. The accusation is not altogether undeserved. But one of the greatest differences between ancient Tamil poetry and the later poetry, is the fidelity to Nature and the relative absence of hyperbolic conceits or descriptions. The fault is rather the other way about. The fidelity to Nature is sometimes so exaggerated as to become a literalism that stifles imagery and poetic expression. Besides, it is well to remember that each nation develops terms of comparison and modes of expression that may seem improper, indecorous or even unintelligible to foreigners. At times, the Latin poets, when describing prodigies and sacrifices, describe the morbid condition of the victim’s viscera with a complacency entirely remote from the experience of English poetry. A literalism and realism of this nature, and a stereotyped set of comparisons, the result of an overfond loyalty to conventions, may be noticed here and there in ancient Tamil poetry, but these do not take away from it the remarkable and accurate beauty of the pictures it presents. Such recurring epithets and similes have to be understood in the same manner as the Homeric phrases, the “wine-dark” sea, the “ambrosial night”, and the “long-shadowing” spear.11 They are probably the relics of the poetry of an earlier age, and that is the explanation for the recurrence of the same similes, for instance, with regard to women’s eyes, namely, the leaf-shaped tip of the spear, the kayal fish, the lotus, the water-lily, the split unripe mango; and the gazelle-gaze. A reader is often taken aback at the accuracy and ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11 C. M. BOWRA, Ancient Greek Literature, p. 28, London, 1945. Gilbert Murray says of the Iliad: “We often find, too, that descriptive phrases are not used so accurately to fit the thing described. They are caught up ready-made from a store of such things: perpetual epithets, front halves of lines, back halves of lines, whole lines, if need be and long formulae. The stores of the poets were full and brimming. A bard need only put in his hand and choose out a well-sounding phrase. Even the similes are ready-made”. (The Rise of the Greek Epic, Second Ed., p. 258). |