Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/145

Rh himself. The diet was extremely plain. Rice was the staple article of food, and milk, butter and honey were in common use. The various kinds of food on which different classes of society subsisted are given in the following account of a wandering minstrel. “The Eyinar or hunters served him with coarse rice of a red colour and the flesh of the Guana, on the broad leaf of the teak tree. The shepherds gave him maize and beans and millet boiled in milk. In the agricultural tracts the laborers invited him to a meal of white rice and the roasted flesh of the fowl. On the sea coast, the fishermen fed him with rice and fried fish in dishes made of palmyra leaves. The Brahmins gave him fine rice with mango pickle and the tender fruits of the pomegranate cooked with butter and the fragrant leaves of the Karuvembu; and the Ulavar or farmers feasted him with sweet- meats and the fruits of the jack and plantain and the cooling water of the cocoanut. In the toddy shops he was regaled with toddy and the fried flesh of the male pig. which had been fattened by being confined in a pit and fed for many days on rice flour.” Toddy drawn from the cocoanut palm was drunk by the poor classes such as labourers, soldiers and wandering minstrels. Scented liquors manufactured from rice and the flowers of the Thathaki (Bauhinia Tomentosa) and other fragrant substances were used by the richer classes. Cool and fragrant wines brought by Yavana (or Greek) ships, which must have been therefore very costly, were the favorite drink of the kings.

Quail fights, dances, musical entertainments and religious festivities appear to have been the chief sources of amusement to the masses of the people. Women amused themselves at home with teaching parrots, singing the Vallai or Ammanai, rocking on swings and playing the games of Thayam, Kalanku or Panthu, Thayam was the same as the modern game of dice; but the blocks of dice used were circular in shape, like the shell of a crab marked with black spots, and not rectangular cubes like those now in use. The game of Kalanku was played with seven tiny balls, each of the size of an areca-nut and the players who remain-