is but the response of the Tamil man to the natural environment within which he grew up.

There is a great feeling for the sea in Tamil poetry which one does not meet with in ancient Sanskrit poetry. Bound as the Tamil peninsula was on two sides of the triangular land mass by the sea, and having as did each of the Tamil kingdoms a long coastline, the people became seafarers by geographical compulsion; and the story of early Indian navigation is the story of early Dravidian seafarers who carried on extensive trade (and incidental colonisation) with the peoples of Southeast Asia and those of the Arabian and Red Sea coasts. There is an equally great feeling for rivers in Tamil poetry, especially the principal rivers on which were situated the capital cities of the Tamil country. Each important river is considered to belong to the royal line of the kingdom within which it flows, and is regarded as the mother who gives life-giving nourishment to the land, or the proud spouse of the kingly line. Annual bathing festivals in land and river characterised the season of the monsoon rains when fresh water increased in the rivers. At times of ritual bathing, the bathers also dropped into the river figurines of fish and crabs made of gold and silver with the prayer that the wealth and fertility caused by the river might increase and multiply. Some of the loveliest lyrics in Tamil are those which deal with the close bonds existing between the river and the kingdom it nourishes.

Like the other great river basins of the world, the Tamil river basins were also the cradles of culture and civilisation. It has been said that the Ganges in the north and the Kaveri in the south are the foci of Indian civilization. (I suppose this is a post-partition statement since it ignores the Indus.) But the songs and poems which either in part or whole are dedicated to the rivers of the Tamil country, speak for a reverential worship of the river as of a goddess, and of a love that one shows a parent combined with the solicitude and care that one bestows on a dear old grandparent.

The river Vaikai, which in the spring season is not so much a 'river of water as of flowers', is said to have as its function 'the nursing of the life of humanity.' The nurse with her life-giving waters is sometimes conceived as a proud spouse who sails along her course conscious of the victories in peace and war that the sovereign of her land has achieved. Here is a matchless verse from the epic Cilappatikaram which has been translated, but with little success: