Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/210



Another poetical work of this period which deserves special mention is the Kalith-thokai. It consists of 150 love songs composed in the Kali metre, said to have been collected by Nallanthuvanar, a Professor of Tamil in the city of Madura. The names of the authors of these songs have not been recorded, but judging from the varying style of the verses, and the different scenes described in them, it appears most probable that all of them are not the production of one and the same author. The songs are mostly in the form of a dialogue, the speakers being chiefly a lady, her servant maid, and her lover. They are remarkable for a refined sentiment of chaste and chivalrous love which runs through most of them, so different from the gross sensuality which pervades the amatory poems composed in Tamil in later periods. The love scenes described in them depict most vividly the social relations between the sexes, and the mode of courtship and marriage peculiar to the Tamils. Some of the scenes areas follow :—A youth going out a-hunting, meets a maiden who is seated on a swing in a shady grove, or bathing in a stream, or mounted on a loft in a cornfield and engaged in scaring away the birds which come to steal the corn, and struck with her beauty he visits the place frequently on pretence of following game. If he finds favor in the lady’s eyes, she allows him to visit her at her house, to take long walks with her, to accompany her to the river and even to assist her in her toilet, and finally he marries her. If however the lady is very coy and does not encourage his suit, he speaks to the lady’s maid, praises her mistress' exceeding beauty and beseeches her aid to procure a meeting. The maid gently broaches the subject to her mistress. She tells her with pride of the noble look of the youthful and handsome stranger