contains a number of laments and elegies. The secular nature of ancient Tamil poetry, as opposed to the religious inspiration of the Vedic hymns, is never so evident as in the silence of the Tamil laments concerning the nature of the other life, and the total absence of finding spiritual solace and consolation at the prospect of other births in compensation for the transitory nature of the present life. If at all anything remains after death, it is pukal and Mānam, or the glory and praise due to the memory of days passed with heroism in battle, and in service to fellow men. One poem addresses itself to a potter who has been commissioned to make the large urn-like jar which is to contain the corpse of the great Valavan of the Cola line, a king who has been praised by poets and whose glory shone like the resplendent sun. The potter has such a task that the urn must contain the king and all his glory. The potter is not to be envied, since the making of such an urn would involve having a potter's wheel as large as the world, and sufficient earth for moulding, for which even the mass of mount Meru would not be enough: Can you, indeed, fashion an urn for him,
With earth from the Great Mountain
And the world as wheel? (Puram, 228) |
A deep sense of melancholy and loss runs through the poems which moan the death of chieftains and of kings. Women constituted an integral part of the bard's troupe, and they were the principal singers and dancers in programmes of entertainment at courts and village community centres. They do not appear to have been panegyrists directly apostrophising the patrons of the bard. Transmission of the arts within the class was easy since entire families, children included, went from chief to chief, and kingdom to kingdom, entertaining villages on their journeys and receiving their hospitality. Human and Humanistic These poems are again very human and humanistic, and in order to assess this Tamil humanism one has to consider the entire complex of attitudes prevalent and fostered in Tamil society, and the abstractions and universals which comprise the conscious and unconscious metaphysic of the age as expressed in the anthologies. Life is considered pleasant and joyful, and death a sad ending; there is no attempt to obtain release from life except to vindicate honour and bravery, and the love for a husband who has passed away; there is a note of nostalgic sadness in the poems about senes- |