There is equally in Tamil literature a great feeling for the shade, probably originating from the temperature during the warm seasons insupportable even to the natives. The goodness of God, benevolence, and kindness are invariably referred to as 'shade', and all kinds and degrees of shade are mentioned. There is the 'rich fat' shade of luxuriant trees; the 'filigree shade of the branches and trees which have shed their leaves,' the 'dotted shade' of sun flecks falling through dense leaves, and the 'net-like shade' or the 'slender shade' of slender leaves and bare leafless twigs. In this heat, the sensation of the touch of water was a consolable blessing, and therefore sporting in sea and river and flowing water is frequently alluded to as also the sensation of touching soft flowers, wet petals, damp leaves, and entering umbrageous groves in which the body feels as if it has entered a cool lake.

Ancient Tamil poetry is not devoid either of feeling for mountains and pastoral landscapes, as we shall see later, since a study of landscape had come to be enjoined on the Tamil poet, and the natural landscape had to form the background of his description of human emotions and human behaviour.

Use of Flowers

What is surprising also is the extent to which the use of flowers and leaves entered Tamil life, as personal ornament, and as symbolic and aesthetic elements in love and war and in worship. Garlands of flowers, or of flowers intertwined with leaves, were worn by men and women for various occasions, so that the word for the kind of garland worn by a woman (kotai) came to signify a woman herself. Men seem to have adorned their heads with chaplets, a fashion which was also in vogue in Greece and in home. The gifts which a lover would give to his beloved during a period of courtship would be garlands made of flowers and graceful leaves picked from his own garden, or from the region from which he came. Originally, the ornaments of women seem to have consisted exclusively of natural flowers, leaves and creepers, and later, when metals were used for ornaments, the gold and silver ornaments were made in imitation of these flowers and leaves, and the names of these flowers and leaves were transferred to the ornaments themselves. Many Tamil speakers are hardly aware of the origin of these ornaments, but if they paused to reflect on the names of the ornaments they wear,