evidence, in the feast of lights must be seen an indication of the cult of the sun and fire.24 In the same spirit did the Tamils revere the moon. The conjunction of the moon with the Rohini asterism was chosen for the celebration of marriages, probably because of the clear moonlit nights that such conjunction assured, and young unmarried maids worshipped the moon.25 Since the cult of Murukan originated in the hills, it was held by popular belief that he inhabited the hill-sides, and the expression “god-habitating range” occur whenever there is mention of hills and mountains within the properties of a king or chief. Rivers and fountains or tarns were also believed to the inhabited by him. The rivers in the Tamil country were objects of affection. In all the three kingdoms of Tamil Naad, even when the rains failed, the rivers were the sources from which the fields were irrigated. The lands on the banks of the Peeriyaar, the Kaaveeri and the Vaiyai could be sure of agricultural produce even if the rains failed in other parts of the country. In a land dependent on rivers for regular irrigation, rivers acquire an importance that they do not in milder climes of constant rainfall. The rivers of Tamil Naad were not considered the source of Tamil prosperity because they were navigable or because they were of strategic importance, but because their waters irrigated the paddy and sugar-cane fields and failed not even when the heavens failed.26 Hence the poetry about the Kaaveeri and the Vaiyai is geater in extent and very different in outlook from the poetry about the “sweet Thames” and the “flavus Tiber”. Each of the Tamil kingdoms had a river which was the source of the kingdom’s prosperity and therefore looked upon as the spouse or daughter of the royal line, the Periyaar of the Ceera line, the Vaiyai of the Paandyan and the Kaaveeri of the Cooḷa. When the season of the annual rains came and the monsoon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 24SWAMI VEDACHALAM, O.C; p. 199. Cfr; Nar; 283, 6-7. 25 Akam; 156, 239; Kur; 307. 26Cf. Silap; XIII, 198. See ROBERT BRITTAIN, Rivers and Man, Longmans, London, 1959. |