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 warnings about the disasters that would overtake the villages for not having paid theitheir [sic] dues to the goddess. In the mountainous country, called Kuṛiñji lived the Kuṛavar, famous in later literature as the heroes of romantic love at first sight; they led the semi-nomad life of the hunter; they hunted with the bow and the arrow and fought wild animals with the Vel. They cut up and skinned the animals they hunted and wore the untanned hide as their dress. They were also brave warriors.

Their women in the earliest days were clad in nothing but the atmosphere around or in hides or in Maravuri, tree-flay, or in leaf-garments, called in Tamil, taḻai-uḍai. Hence arose the custom of presenting a garment made of leaves and flowers to the bride as a symbol of marriage, as in Malabar to-day presenting a Muṇḍu, short piece of cloth, to the bride is still the chief incident of the wedding-rite.

These women wove baskets and made many other articles with the strips of the bamboo, occupations still followed by Kuṛavar throughout Southern India. Their favourite god was Murugan, the God of the Hills, who has throughout the ages remained essentially a god enshrined on hill-tops, notwithstanding later affiliations with post-Vedic mythology, As Lord of the Hills, the abode of serpents, he reveals himself even to-day to his devotees in the form of a serpent. The hill country being at all times the home of romantic love at first sight, he was, and continues to be to-day, the boy-lover, the Śēyōn,