CHAPTER SEVEN

THE REGIONAL LANDSCAPES

The Mountains

The purpose of this chapter is to portray briefly in broad outline the landscape of the Tamil country as pictured by the Tamil poets in poems of both the akam and the puṛam class. Any thirty or forty poems of the poetry of each region chosen at random from the anthologies should give one a comprehensive idea of landscape as depicted in Tamil poetry. The landscape of Tamil poetry is both real and synthetic, real in the puṛam poems but mostly synthetic in the akam. By synthetic, I do not mean the landscape is unreal. The descriptions are true to Nature and true to fact, but the poet may not be describing any single spot of the Tamil country. He may choose his details from various spots provided they are in harmony with the season of the year and of day, and with the particular region which forms the background of his poem. In his choice he would give preference to such details of landscape as heighten or bring into relief the "essential theme" of human behaviour about which he wishes to write.

In Tamil poetry as we have seen, mountains and hills and the territories covered by them occupy a privileged place. They form the background for love poetry whenever it describes the meeting of lovers and all the attendant circumstances intimately connected with such trysts. In puṛam poetry, they form the background of the initial stage of warfare, of frontier raids and forays for the purpose of cattle-lifting. The panegyric passages and poems addressed to mountain chiefs contain many references to the hill country over which they rule. The Malaipaṭukaṭaam or the "Poem of Mountain Sounds", deserves special mention because it is devoted mainly to descriptions relating to hills covered by dense forests. This poem of 583 lines portrays vividly the sights and sounds of that particular region ruled by the Chief, Nannan. The