The other four kinds of landscapes were prescribed as settings for poems dealing with separation of lovers. This separation might take place during the pre-nuptial or the post-nuptial period. During the pre-nuptial period, because the meetings of hero and heroine were clandestine as far as the heroine’s near relatives were concerned, it was but natural that the hero could not meet the heroine except by previous arrangement when the parents and brothers would not be about the trysting place. Both in the pre-nuptial and the post-nuptial period, the hero might depart on long journeys for various reasons. He might part in order to acquire wealth, an indispensable commodity for the ideal of an altruistic and philanthropic life. He might part, gallant warrior as he is, to enforce peace between warring princes, to help the helpless, or bring comfort to the comfortless. He might part to visit his subjects or his subordinates, to bring them timely succour; or he might part to acquire learning.⁹

What were the psychological reactions of the heroine and the hero during these enforced or voluntary separations? Though the hero’s feelings are also considered in the poems, poets take more into account the heroine’s sufferings as they are undoubtedly greater and more attractive to the subject of poetry. Further, it would be unheroic to depict the hero as pining and sorrowing to the detriment of the many tasks he has to accomplish. In the event of the period of separation being short, the heroine might bear it with resignation. The pasture-land was the appropriate setting for a poem of this nature. The author of such a poem, of the annual seasons, had to choose the season of the clouds, mid-August to mid-October, and of the divisions of the day, the evening or the dusk.¹⁰

The Indians, by custom based on expediency and climatic conditions, did most of their travel and even completed their wars before the setting in of the cloud-season and the monsoon rains. The hero before he sets out on his travels or his wars mentions to the heroine that he will return before the coming of the cloud-season. The clouds gather; the first rains set in; the mullai, a common feature of the landscape, unfolds its buds at dusk filling the vicinity with its fragrance, the

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