Page:Tamil studies.djvu/66

Rh Tamils were, like the Assyrians and Babylonians, a ferocious race of hunters and soldiers armed with bows and lances making war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging and pillaging. Like them the Tamils believed in evil spirits, astrology, omens and sorcery. They cared little for death. The following quotations from the above work will bear testimony to the characteristics of that virile race:

(1) Garlanded with the entrails of enemies they danced with lances held in their hands topside down. (2) They set fire to the fertile villages of their enemies; (3) and plundered their country and demolished their houses. (4) The devil's cook distıibuted the food boiled with the flesh of the slain, on the hearth of the crowned heads of fallen kings and stirred with the ladle of the bangled arm.

With these compare some passages from the Assyrian stories of campaigns. 'I had some of them flayed in my presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form of garlands ... I