Page:Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture.djvu/76

 'Green parrot with the red bill, who go on picking the bent stalks of the panicum, do not fear me, give up the fear that any one would threaten you for picking the stalks. When you have finished with them and are at leisure, attend to my wants; I join my palms and beg you to help me in this affair. If you go to your relatives who live in my lover's country, where grows the jack tree which bears abundant fruits, meet my lover who is the lord of this mountain and tell him that the young Kuṛava woman of the forest around this mountain is guarding the millet field to-day as usual.'

'The banyan tree bears many boughs full of fruits; to eat the fruit many birds crowd round the tree. Their cries resemble the sound of many musical instruments.'

'The crowds of beets which have thin wings eat the honey, and after the honey is exhausted desert the flowers.

'The āral, lamprey, with nose like an ear of corn, creeps into the mud; the vāḹai, Trichiurus lepturus, which has a horn, moves tremulously on the water; the fishermen approach the tank which have flowers bright as the flame, the tortoise looks like the hollow-bowelled kiṇai, (the drum of the marudam); the gravid varāl, Ophicephalus striatus, is like the nugumbu of the palmyra; with it fights the kayal, carp, which shines like a spear.'

The ancient Tamils distinguished and named innumerable trees, plants, shrubs and creepers and knew their properties. The pure Tamil names of a few trees alone will be here referred to: achcham, Coronilla grandiflora, commonly called agatti, probably after Agastiya, atti, Indian fig, anichchari, a sensitive tree, āchchā, Diospyros ebenaster, ātti, Bauhineara cemosa, āl, the banyan, itti, Ficus virens, ilandai, jujube, ilavam, the silk-cotton tree, iluppai, the long-leaved Bassia, īndu, Phoenix farinifera, uśil, Acacia pennata, eṭṭi,