konṛai (cassia fistula) hangs out its golden garlands, but the hero does not return. It is here that the heroine manifests her virtue by awaiting her hero’s return in patience, suppressing her grief and the tendency to complain against her lover. Since there is virtue in her patient and faithful waiting, the mullai flower came to designate chastity itself. The period of day prescribed for this class of poems is evening, to be more exact, dusk, the hour when the sunlight is fading and night prepares to spread her mantle over the earth. Hence the dusk is called in language reminiscent of Shelley, the “filmy-eyed.” The melancholic aspect of this hour, its power to evoke thoughts of dear ones and forgotten memories, has been mentioned by poets of all nations. Gray, in his Elegy used it to advantage, and Dante immortalized it before him in his Divina Commedia when he wrote: Era già I’ora che volge il disio
ai naviganti e’ entenerisce il core
lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio. |
It was the hour that turns back the desire of those who sail the seas and melts their heart, that day when they have said to their sweet friends, adieu, and that pierces the new pilgrim with love, if from far he hears the chimes which seem to mourn for the dying day.11 |
The choice of this hour of day for this class of poems was eminently suited to match the emotional reaction in lovers that mourn lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio. The section in puṛam poetry corresponding to mullai was vañci.It is the name of a yellow flower and shrub (Hiptage madoblata) “handsome when in full blossom with its profuse trusses of white and yellow fragrant flowers, somewhat resembling the horse-chestnut.”12 It denoted the strategic movement in which a king who wishes to conquer another’s country resides in a temporary military camp pitched within the ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11 II purgatorio, Canto, 8, 1 ff. Byron, Don ‘Juan, III, 108:
Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart . . . seeming to weep the dying day’s decay. |
12 The Tamilian Antiquary, ibid; p. 19. |