lyres or the small lyres, or by the posture they adopted while singing panegyrics in court, whether they were entitled to sit or stand before their patrons.

We have no means of assessing the number of bards or bardic troupes which existed in this ancient period, but all evidence points to their having been numerous, each village having its own troupe, and the larger villages and towns several troupes or families of bards and bardesses.

Many of these troupes led a wandering life in search of patronage in various parts of the Tamil country. They were of primary importance, not only in the development of oral and written literature, but also in the growth and popular appreciation of music, dance and drama. Princely patronage was the bard's reward for his service to the community. While many of the bards wandered in the Tamil kingdoms and chieftaincies, there were others who appear to have been official bards at the courts of chiefs and kings. Like all panegyrists they are mostly concerned with contemporaries, their patrons, whom they praise or whose passing away in the palace or in the foray they lament. Almost their entire literature, even if it was recorded, has perished, and what remains consists probably of a few eulogistic and didactic poems which were preserved in the courts of the patrons they celebrated.

It was their oral literature which made further literary progress possible. A bard's compositions are generally anonymous; they are not personal or individualistic, but speak for the community as a whole. The bard educates a heroic or epic age by holding up for imitation the type of hero who is the ideal for his community and his age, and crystallises his ideas even in single words which are charged with a dynamic meaning for his contemporaries. Just as words like areté (valour, virtue, virtu) were significant in Homeric education, the words sānron (perfect, wise, and complete warrior, or man), pukal (glory) were significant and dynamic words for creating a heroic image in Tamil society. The aim and purpose of life is to be a sānron, a wise and complete man; a land or a village is happy because there live many such perfect men; a mother is justifiably proud, and more gladdened than when she heard a man-child was born to her, when she hears that her son is recognised as a sānron. The way of the sānron is the path marked out for those who wish to be good and great, and is the norm to be followed.

This complete man endeavours to establish his glory (pukal) and his honour (mānam) in war and peace. When one passes from this world of changes to the changeless life, what remains is the glory man has left behind by his heroic deeds in war and by a life of altruism and liberality.