cattle. He was always uttering sweet music with the flute (kuḷal) and its music moved all nature. Besides singing, he delighted in dancing. Surrounded by a crowd of milkmaids, he or his priest danced most complicated dances, as herdsfolk do today. Milk and milk-products, sometimes mixed with boiled rice were his offering. Pastoral life affords more opportunities than a hunter's life for indulging in the delights of love, as it also provides occasions for the temporary parting of lovers, which later only heightens the pleasure of re-union. The life of the herdsman is the jolliest of all, because, unlike the hunter or the man who sails far out into the sea whose lives are fraught with risks, he does the easy work of leisurely tending cattle in the forest. Hence the Black God of the tenders of cattle is the jolliest of the Indian Gods. The god of the coastal region was, of course, the dread lord of the sea. The horn of the terrible shark symbolized him in the rituals of his fisherman-worshippers, who crowded on the sea coast, black men and women with children on their hips, and offered him fresh or salted fish and meat. The joys of love were not denied to the fisherfolk; for we read in the literature of a later period that noblemen of the surrounding regions were, notwithstanding the fishy smell of the well-grown limbs of these swarthy dames who embellished their persons with the lilies of the marshes, smitten with love for them, and while their menfolk were away, out on the sea, drove in their carts or chariots to the sea-side to visit their paramours.... The last of the regions was Pālai, the desert, the home of the marauder. Like the adjacent hilly tracts it was the region where the matriarchate persisted for a long period; and hence the divinity of this region was the goddess of victory (Koṛṛavai) and her devotees, the Maṛavar men of cruel deeds, offered her bloody sacrifices human and animal. Pālai was the bleak land, appropriately associated with the tragedy of love, that is, the long parting of the lovers, when the hero goes out in search of fortune to lay at the feet of the beloved and has to travel along sandy paths covered with the bleaching bones of the dead. Koṛṛavai was worshipped with wild drunken revelry as may well be imagined. Four of these five gods are enumerated by Tolkāppiyanār. "The world of forests desired by Māyon (the black god), the world of hills desired by Seyon (the red god), the world of sweet waters desired by the King (of gods) and the world of wide sand desired by Varuṇan, are respectively called Mullai, Kuṛiñji, Marudam and Neydal.1 It will be noticed that Tolkāppiyanār identifies the old Tamil gods with the corresponding Aryan ones and calls the god ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 Tol. Por. i. 5. |