opportunities for secret and clandestine meetings, at least according to the commentators.

The opposite in puṛam poetry to kuriciwas veṭci, and due to early and primitive association, meant the initial stage of warfare, forays and frontier raids made for the purpose of cattle-lifting. Veṭci is the name of a flower, again indigenous to the mountain region, the ixora coccinea, and cattle-lifting came to be designated by this name, because the Tamil warriors adorned themselves with wreaths and garlands of these red flowers whenever they set out on cattle raids.

In fact, each strategic movement, or aspect of war, had its own particular flower after which the movement was named. The garland was symbolic of the character of the undertakings, and the feelings of those engaged in them. A verse of a later epoch says that the soldiers setting forth decorated with the ixora seemed as if the rosy evening sky were moving.⁶

Commenting on the use of flowers by the ancient Tamils for warfare, Dr. Pope observes: “This is to us a novel form of the language of flowers. . . . These garlands were intended to strike terror into the eyes of the opposing hosts, and to some extent supplied the place of military uniform. The armies of Europe have never been unmindful of the moral effect of the soldier’s head-dress; though it would be a novel experience if our troops went forth to war like a marching garden of flaming and fragant’ flowers.”⁷ The author of Paṭṭinappaalai, describing Karikaalan on the battle-field decked with appropriate flowers and leaves, compares the king to a hillock overgrown with shrubs.⁸ Apart from the aesthetic and natural love of flowers which the Tamils shared with the Greeks and Romans, it is not unlikely that the abundance of wreaths and garlands used in warfare and in ordinary life, served to keep the body, especially the head, cool, and was a medicinal protection against the sun. The purpose for which sandal-paste was used to give fragrance and to reduce the body temperature, or the sensation of heat seems to have been also the purpose for which wreaths and garlands were used in such profusion.

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   ⁸ Cfr. G. Soutar, Nature inGreek Poetry, London, 1939, p. 47, where a similar comparison of Homer is noted.