பக்கம் எண் :

320The Contribution of European Scholars

Beschi has written Aṭaikkalamālai and it is in Kaḷiveṇpā metre. It was the custom to compose Ulās in the metre. The first Ulā to be composed in this metre was Ñāṉulā. Numerous Ulās later followed. Natives excelled in them.The hero starts on a procession. His qualities and features are vividly described; so are all the other items in the cavalcade. Women onlookers - of whom there are seven different kinds according to their age group in life - fall in love with this hero. Beschi called his work Aṭaikkalamālai beneath this title, he has added Ulā. The hero and the procession, as in native works, are well described but he omits the latter part where the feeling of the women spectators is described. Perhaps, this was the reason why he called his composition Aṭaikkalamālai instead of Ulā. But in Pirapantams provision is made for naming the verse as Mālai. Until quite recently, this lyric was sung by Christians during funeral processions, around Trichinopoly. The lyric was afterwards found at the end of prayer books. Native Hindus sang their lyrics of this kind during processions of a joyous nature and not during funeral processions.

Aṭaikkalanāyakimēl Veṇkalippā was another minor poem by Beschi. In Tamil, it was the custom to sing in Kaliveṇpā on God. They are expositions of the drastic change which overtakes a devotee who had previously led a very loose moral life. In the Tiruvācakam, there are poems of Aṭaikkalappattu and Piṭittapattu. Here, the devotee completely surrenders himself to his God. In the former, the devotee bewails his deplorable predicament and wishes to surrender himself to his God. In the latter, he has already surrendered himself and then refuses to release himself from his God. Beschi, it appears has combined the two. He speaks of his folly of worshipping earlier the homeless demons. His simile is exquisite. He compares the roofless devils to the petalless flowers of the garland in the cremation ground (lines 20 to 22). It looks, as though some of Beschi’s lines can be compared with similar lines of the Tiruvācakam.

Beschi’s next work is Tirukkāvalūr Kalampakam. Kalampakam was one kind of Pirapantam. This was also quite