Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/125

Rh which they loved to praise in their rhapsodies, reckless courage, lavish liberality and a gaiety which no reverse could check. He soon became their idol and his fame spread throughout Tamilakam. The bards recounted in glowing language, in the courts of the Chera, Chola and Pandya the princely hospitality with which they were entertained by Pâri. This excited the jealousy of the three kings and they sent their forces to besiege Parambu. The defiles of the mountain passes, with which Pari’s followers were familiar, were strictly guarded by them, and Pari, by his personal bravery maintained for some days an unequal contest with the large and well-equipped army that surrounded him. At length the enemies forced their way up the mountain and attacked Pari who was killed in the encounter. The poet Kapilar who was the boon companion of Pan, uttered the following stanzas when Parambu was besieged by the armies of the three kings :—

“It is hard to conquer Parambu though the three kings invest it with their allied armies. Three hundred in number are the villages in the fertile Parambu-Nâd: and all the three hundred are now the property of bards. Myelf and Pari remain : and here is our hill if ye come to us singing as minstrels do.”

“Is it easy to seize the Parambu of which Pari is the lord? Though the three, kings who possess thundering drums, blockade the hill, it will yield four product for which no ploughing is required: first, the thin-leaved bamboos supply rice; second the jack trees furnish sweet fruits, third, the stout Valli creepers yield edible roots ; and fourth, honey drips on the hill, when monkeys leap on the hives; spacious as the sky is the summit of the hill, and numerous as the stars are the springs therein. If you post a chariot on every farm and an elephant to every tree around the hill you cannot storm it with your soldiers, nor cut your way with swords. I know by what stratagem the hill can be captured. If striking the tuneful chords of a small lute, ye come singing and dancing followed by your songstresses, he would grant ye all his lands and his mountain.”

Of the brave kinsmen of Pâri, every one had fallen in his defence: and only his two daughters were left to lament timely death. The troops of minstrels who had lived on his