Page:Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture.djvu/38

 the calf eats, and the young flowers of the blue water-lily which are like clean gems when the sounding rain-drops fall from the sky and adorned the bride with these garlands. Underneath a pandal strewn with sand which was cool as if rain had fallen on it, the relatives of the bride gave her away.' In the ancient marriage-rite there was no circumambulation of fire, tivalam śeydal, which Brāhmaṇa purohitas of later ages invented in imitation of the wedding-rite of the higher varnas and introduced into the marriage-ritual of the Tamils.

In the agricultural region, there also arose kūttiya and viṛaliyar, dancing-women and singing women, who were ladies of easy virtue and lived the life of hetairae, the parattaiyar, who brought to a premature end the course of wedded love. Hence ūḍal and kūḍal, estrangement and reunion between husband and wife, was correlated to Marudan.

Besides these five incidents of normal love, there also existed, among the ancient Tamils, two forms of abnormal love, viz., Kaikkiḷai, love of a man for an immature girl incapable of feeling the gentle passion, and Perundiṇai, love of a man for a woman who does not reciprocate his love; in such a case, the man maddened with passion, made a horse of the sharp-edged stem of the palmyra, provided it with wheels and rode through the streets, bleeding, till the lady relented, or committed suicide if she did not, a proceeding technically called Maḍalēṛudal ; these are also described in many odes.

They make, of the stem of a palmyra leaf, a horse which does not require fodder, and attach to it reins adorned with small bells; the hero, wearing a garland of the short flowers of the erukku, calotropis gigantea, mounts it. We drag the horse along the streets and boys gather behind and follow the procession.'

Wearing a garland in which the fresh flowers of the āvirai, cassia auriculata, which resemble gold in colour, are strung on many threads,