"Lyric of Kuṛiñci" by Kapilar consisting of 261 lines illustrates many of the requisites of Kuṛiñci poetry. Many and diverse are the circumstances which determine the classification of a poem under the Kuṛiñci class. ''Union and its allied states" is a very general head which includes several mental states and types of conversation among all those involved in a love theme. Tolkaappiyar presents the codified poetic system of his time and mentions the several ways in which lovers meet and talk, and the parts played by the lovers themselves, by the parents, the brothers, the nurse, and the nurse's daughter who plays the role of constant companion and confidant of the lady. He draws up briefly the matter and mode of dialogues or conversations and even the feelings that should be uppermost in the hearts and minds of the characters of the poems as well as the emotions which the reader or hearer might expect to interpret from the poems.¹

A Kuṛñici poem, sonnet-like and consisting of twelve or fifteen lines, might be the supposed announcement of a lady to her maid as to how she has come across one to whom she has given her heart, or it might be the supposed upbraiding of the lover by the maid for his having broken the heart of her lady by his apparent negligence and reluctance to celebrate the ceremonial and public act of marriage. It may be the clever announcement of the maid to the nurse that her lady is in love and that she will marry no other than the one upon whom she has set her heart. It may be the mere poetic expression of the pleasures of the reunion of lovers or it may be soliloquies of the lovers. The poet may imagine himself to be the lady or the maid or the lover or the nurse or the parents. He is expected to put himself in the place of anyone of these actors in the drama of love, and his art is evaluated by his insight into the psychology especially of the female heart, its tantrums, its vagaries, its depth of feelings and its restlessness in separation.

The Tamil poets had as lovely a hill region as any to portray as the stage for the poems of this kind. The visitor to popular hill resorts such as Kodaikanal or Ootacamund, or Coonoor can have but a faint notion of what the Tamil poets

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   ¹ See T. e.g. 982-988; 1057, 1060, 1061, 1092-1099.