though Tolkaappiyam does not mention the special name of any god.¹⁴ The earliest form of religion we know of the paalai dwellers is worship of heroes fallen in marauding expeditions. Stones bearing particulars about the name and greatness of the heroes were erected in their memory, and on days when their memory was commemorated, possibly on the anniversary days of their death, the stones were decorated with peacock feathers, garlands of red flowers and the weapons which they used during life.¹⁵ Their life was a predatory one; victory in their expeditions was their goal, and hence their religious sentiments gradually developed into the concrete form of a goddess of Victory, Koṛṛavai, to whom offerings were made of the spoils won by plunder.¹⁶ In paalai we see the revival of the cult of the Mother-goddess, an ancient Dravidian cult.

This was briefly an aspect of the religious evolution that took place in the Tamil Naad. The worship of God receiving a local colouring and a local name led later on to people conceiving each separate region as having a separate god, and the confusion was complete when puranic legend and Tamil superstition and folklore so combined as to bury the original truth under mountainous error. Tirumaal or Maayoon has been represented as a shepherd. The Paripaaṭal contains a few of the devotional odes that were composed in his honour, and gives us passages of exceptional beauty in which the god is said to inform the entire universe.

Poems with the pastoral region as background refer to him with great love and devotion. While the worship of Murukan in the hill region emphasizes an element of fear, the worship of Tirumaal emphasizes the element of love. In this difference must be seen also the impact of Nature, of the anxious life in the mountains for fear of wild animals in contrast with the life in the meadows. The shepherds and shepherdesses join in pastoral dances to worship Tirumaal to the accompaniment of the flute made of the bamboo or the elongated konṛai pod.

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   ¹⁴See P. T. SRINVAS IYENGAR, O.C. 21 f.

   ¹⁵ Puram; 260; 264; Akam; 67; 131.

   ¹⁶See P.T.S. o.c; ibid.; Journal of the Annamalai University, Vol. XXI, p. 164.