lation and even the higher classes have not totally given up resorting to the help of these spirits in times of difficulty. Some of these cults have also been absorbed by higher cults which mark a higher stage of civilization. Thus the Nāga cult became coalesced with that of Murugan who was again identified with Subrahmaṇya of the Āryas; for even today, Subrahmaṇya appears to the physical eyes of his devotees only in the form of a serpent; when a devotee of this god has invoked his help, the appearance of a serpent means that the god has granted the prayer. Tree cults have coalesced with the śiva cult. The most famous of existing śiva shrines are intimately associated with some tree or other. So too the cult of the health-giving Tulasi plant has coalesced with the worship of Viṣṇu. From the Nāga cult śiva got his numerous serpent-ornaments, and Viṣṇu his couch of the thousand headed serpent. The Buddha became himself a Nāga and several Bauddha and Jaina saints got five serpent-heads.

But long before these advanced cults, called Āgamika, arose, higher gods than the local demons or the spirits inhabiting trees, rivers and hills, were evolved in the country. These gods were evolved in each region separately and in accordance with the geographical characteristics of each region. The god of the hilly region was the Red God (Seyon), also called Murugan, who was the patron of pre-nuptial love. He was offered by his worshippers balls of rice mixed with the red blood of goats killed in his behalf. He was a hunter and carried the Vel or spear and was hence called Velan, spearman. His priest was also called Velan. This god created the love-frenzy in girls; and when girls were obsessed by him, the priest performed magic rites for curing the love-sick girl. When the priest was in communion with the god, he was also seized with the divine frenzy and sang and danced a devil-dance (Veṛiyāṭṭam). Women, too, took part in priestly functions. Men or women priests, when under the influence of the god, not only sang and danced but also read the dim past, predicted the future, diagnosed diseases (and the particular demons that caused each disease), and cured all the ills that the flesh and the brain were heir to. The means of cure were not solely supernatural for, as the hilly region abounded in simples, the magic of the priests and priestesses was fortified by the use of drugs. Hence the early priest was also the medicine-man and even today, notwithstanding millenniums of philosophical evolution, the devil priest-cum-medicine-man of the degraded Kuṛavar tribe drives a flourishing trade among the élite of society, on the sly.

The god of the pastoral region-Mullai-was the Black God (Māyon), who was a herdsman, beloved both of milkmaids and of