The mountaineers trade in ivory, and barter it for salt from the littorals. For their cereals, they grow especially panicum irrigating their sparse plots of arable land with the water from the mountain streams. Their food consists of also the other produce of the hills, namely, the tubers of the vaḷḷi, and the honey that is so plentiful on the branches of the trees and the beetling rocks. The young women keep watch over the crops during the day. The heroine of the love poems too is equally matched with the hero in nobility of birth and loftiness of ideals. She occupies herself during the day with her maid and other playmates of her age by driving the birds, especially the parrots, that may cause destruction to the crops. They dare not hurt them but make a frightening noise with the taṭṭai, a device made of the palmyrah stalk which when separated into two and beaten together makes a loud dull thud like that which is produced when beating two flat wooden planks together. They raise their own voices too, or make musical sounds that the parrots may not settle down on the turf.4 In these parts, during certain seasons, parrots swarm in hundreds and fill the region with their shrill cries. The damsels play on the swings arranged for them, or bathe in the streams or wander about the neighbourhood gathering flowers from the lakes and the trees and adorning themselves. To scare away wild animals, a tiger-like form was kept in the cultivated plots.5 The domain of the chief is fenced with heaven-kissing hills. They are so lofty that they baffle even the monkey which is so agile and knows no limitations to its capacity for climbing. The dark rain clouds rest on the hills. The rivers, glistening like snakes, or white as linen, rush down the mountain-side, or leap from rock to rock, and the cataracts roar like war drums. At times of torrential rain the mountain-rivers carry with them to the low-lands the trees, plants and flowers of the hillside. On the mountain sides there are dense and almost impenetrable forests where the air is as cooling as the waters in a tank and where even the sunlight hardly enters. Among the ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4Kur; 29. A device known as Kulir is also mentioned to drive birds away. Akam; 118. 5Aink; 246; Nar; 206, 251. |