vicinity. But two thousand years ago it presented a more pleasing prospect with its wooded sides, its groves, its little rivulets in the rainy season, its pools for ceremonial and festive bathing, and its caves with their historic echoes.

It is comparable to the Himƒlayas, says a poet, for it is here that the gods congregate to pay their respect to Murukan. The pool is like the lotus-tank in which Murukan had his birth; the thunder of the clouds sound like the elephant on which he sometimes appears. The Vaiyai river too which flows near Maturai is said to be pre-eminently his river, for it was he who supplied it with prosperous waters.

His devotees revel in the newness of life and beauty that the hill wears after the first rains in August and September, when the tanks are filled with acquatic flowers; when the konṛai hangs out on its branches its golden garlands, the veenkai bursts into bloom, the gloriosa superba unfolds its rosy fingers, and the bees and beetles make music like the strings of the lute, while the peacocks and peahens cry as if appealing to departed lovers to linger no more but return to their own.⁷

The kaṭambu tree was the tree most sacred to Murukan. His spirit was supposed to inform the tree, and a particular kaṭambu at the foot of the Tirupparaṅkunṛam hill was the object of great devotion.⁸

The pilgrims flocked to the hill from the city of Maturai. One feels that the particular poet has been under the influence of foreign literature when he exaggerates saying that the highway between Maturai and Tirupparaṅkunṛam was covered beyond recognition by the flowers alone that had dropped from the heads and garlands of the pilgrim crowds that had betaken themselves to the hill on a festive occasion, and the clouds of sandalwood smoke that rose from the fires of the suppliants hid the very sunlit heavens. On such occasions nature and art would vie in mutual emulation. Beetles droned in contrast with the sounds of the lute; the hum of dragon flies seconded the wailing of the flute; the roar of the running water echoed the reverberations of the drum sounded for the sacrifice; and while maidens swayed in sacred dance, from

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