glades, and umbrageous trees, probably originated the belief that evil spirits inhabited them, and they might hurt passers-by. An offering, prayer, a song would appease them.

Max Müller explains much in animism by superstition, a poetical conception of Nature, and especially by personification. He says that inanimate objects were conceived as active powers, and as such were described as agents by a necessity of language, without, however, predicating life or soul of them, for human language knows at first no agents except human agents. Hence animism was a state of thought reached slowly and not by sudden impulses. “What is classed as animism in ancient Aryan mythology”, he writes, “is often no more than a poetical conception of Nature which enables the poet to address sun, moon, rivers and trees as if they could hear and understand his words.”²⁹ This origin of animism cannot be said of Tamilian animism, for the practical realism and concretizing mentality of the Tamils, not often developed into personification and pathetic fallacy. Their poetical conception of Nature seldom led them to address sun, moon and stars as if they could hear and understand them. The apostrophes to objects in Nature are so brief and relatively few in Cankam poetry and occur only as rapid outbursts of a soul tense with emotion. They are hardly shown to be the result of study and reflection.

It may be reasonably believed that Tamil animism developed from the association of special trees, special plants, special animals, and other special objects with the worship of the regional God. As the plurality of aspects under which God was worshipped led later on to Murukan, and Tirumaal, Veentan and Varuṇan being considered separately and even rival deities, so too objects at first merely symbolic of these gods, at a later stage were considered to be habitations of these gods and given the reverence and worship due to the gods themselves. The hill, the colour of which resembled the colour of Tirumaal, had a sacred association which later developed into worship. Similarly the trees associated with the respective gods, or the flowers which were used in their worship came to be considered as places of their habitation. Old

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   ²⁹See article on “Animism” in Catholic Encyclopaedia.