Page:Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture.djvu/83

 front of a hut which possessed a hen-coop, resembling a loft from which men guard the crops from being devasteddevastated [sic] by elephants, was a woman, with a child at her side, and a twig of margosa with flowers and leaves held in her hands to protect the child from demons; she stood near the yoke from which was hanging a pot of vinegar, tied with strings like the drum of a dancing girl on a dancing platform; and she beat the back of the bull with a wooden mortar whose mouth was as big as the knee of a female elephant with tusks resembling the shoot of a bamboo. Their men who wore garlands of flowers and leaves, whose shoulders were big, beautiful and strong, and whose limbs were supple and powerful, walked by the cart to whose yokes rows of bulls were tied with ropes passing through small holes; the men saw that the carts were not upset. They fixed the price of salt in terms of other articles and passed along the road with teams of reserve bulls to replace those that became exhausted.'

What an extremely realistic and at the same time highly poetical description of a subject which no modern man would regard as capable of poetic treatment at all!

Another article hawked about from place to place was pepper. Grown in Malabar, the land of the Śēras, it was a necessary ingredient of curry throughout South India. 'Pepper bags looking like the small-pulped big jack fruit which grows at the foot of the majestic jack-tree are balanced on the strong, scarred, prick-eared donkey which carries the pepper along long roads where tolls are collected. These roads are guarded by bow-men.'

Gradually as cities grew in size, the power of monarchs grew to ample proportions, civilization advanced, and trade in numerous articles of necessity and luxury grew in the land. In cities there were people who vended various things including many beautiful looking