sandalwood that grows on this mountain and these ranges, has been always a favourite term of comparison with poets, including Kālidāsa. The hill would seem to have been included for sometime within the kingdom belonging to chiefs of the Aay family, the Aioi of the Greeks. The heroine is said to be as fragrant as the sandalwood, or the veenkai and kaantal of Aay’s Potiyil, and cooler than its water-lilies.5 The eyes of a heroine are usually compared to neytal blooms or to water-lilies. But often the flowers are specified as belonging to the lakes or tanks of some historic place or famed ruler. Thus, in a poem of the Akanaanuuṛu collection, the eyes are compared to the neytal blooms of a maritime lake bordering the sea near Korkei, the, emporium of the Paaṇṭiyas.6 Paraṇar, in another poem of the same anthology, after having enumerated the various difficulties and obstacles that a hero has to overcome to keep a tryst with his heroine, concludes saying that they are as insurmountable as the outer defences and defence-forests of Tittan’s Uṛaiyuur.7 Another poet compares the forlorn appearance of the heroine on learning of the impending departure of the hero, to the groves around the Kaaveeri which look desolate after the departure of the people who were feasting there: Thy forehead is like unto the honey-smelling groves floored with white sand on the tender shores of the great river. After the March festival, under the dense trees rich with foliage and flowers, may be seen the ashes of fires kindled by those who have been feasting. As desolate as the grove without people art thou. Your shoulders, too, once resembling the elegant and stately bamboos that grow on the flanks of the Potiyil hill that belongs to the Paantiyan, master of the southern sea rich in peerless pearls, have also lost their pristine elegance. | (Akam; 137) |
Numerous examples may be given of the brief but significant ways in which history and Nature and personal association ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5Kur; 84. See R. Caldwell, Comparative Grammar, Earlier Traces of the Dravidian Languages; p. 91 ff. 6Akam; 130. Cfr; Akam; 47, 69. See R.Caldwell, op. cit., ibid. 7Akam; 122, 21-23. |