The Song World in Tamil:
A Glimpse
BY T. K. CHIDAMBARANATHA MUDALIAR, B.A., B.L.
(Ex-Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowment Board, Madras)
I
Man’s life on this earth has never been an easy one. From Adam down to the present-day coolie, man had to live by the sweat of his brow. The land of plenty and the land of drought are often things far apart. The rich and the poor seem to be also eternal entities. Under these circumstances the bountiful heart feels the need of giving relief to the poor, and out of true charity, gives. This gift finds response in the grateful hearts of thousands. No wonder when people go from place to place, (pilgrimage was such a common thing in those ancient days), from Cape Comorin to the very Mount Kailas and vice versa, they found an inexhaustible theme in the acts of charity they witnessed or heard of. Even to-day a munificent gift made in this country finds recognition in the columns of a New York newspaper the next morning. Now let us see how the poet sings of this grateful appreciation of a gift. Here is an old song (1st century A.D.?):
The beat of the Drum is heard miles afar;
The thunder in the Clouds is heard for tens of miles.
But all the three worlds do hear
The Praise that a gift was made,
Oh, on this earth.
II
It is indeed difficult to realise fully all the psychological implications of war, as it was a couple of thousand years ago. People never had the long periods of peace which have been prevailing of late. In the present-day warfare, it is not any soul force that operates but only a mechanical force operating against the one on the other side.
The operative force being mechanical, war has only a depressing effect upon the people. Whereas, in those ancient days war brought out the innate heroism in men and also in women. We will see how a woman felt the supreme need of war-like spirit in a land subject to constant attacks from neighbouring states. It would almost seem as though her attitude to her son was unmotherly:
My duty as mother is to bring forth and to bring up;
To educate is the father’s duty;
To make manful is the king’s duty;
To give the spear is the duty of the blacksmith;
And my son’s duty is–
To plunge into the battlefield,
To pierce the elephant in the enemy’s line,
And return triumphant.
III
Till very recently, Art and Poetry had to be fostered, practically all the world over, by patrons. For thousands of years the Tamil country was fortunate enough to have munificent patrons. But for such patronage, the poet’s lot would have been a melancholy one, and ‘chill penury’ would have frozen ‘the genial current of his soul.’
In one of the eastern ports of Tamil Nad (Kayalpatnam) some two hundred years back, there was a merchant prince, Syed Khadar by name. He had such a fine sense of poetry that he had always about him poets and scholars of taste and learning, and his munificent gifts to the poets were the talk of everybody in the land. A number of poets as a result of his patronage put forth their best endeavours in bringing out poems. In the midst of all this bounty and poetic adventure, the patron died, and that suddenly. The despair that must have overtaken those patronized, may easily be imagined. Now, for the voice of despair:
The goddess of Wealth is there;
The goddess of Earth with all her bounty is there;
The goddess of the Muses also is there;
We ourselves are, O Poets, all alive here;
What avails all this
When our patron Lord is now no more?–
Learning, O brethren, is dead, dead, for ever dead.
IV
It would be no exaggeration to say that thousands of years ago, why, tens of thousands of years ago, some great souls had discovered the truth that God was all-pervasive, and that in the inmost heart of every human being the spirit of God was present. This truth was known to the Jews also in the distant West, and in the Bible we have the saying ‘The Kingdom of God is within thee.’ The text, as it is, emphasises the fact well enough, but the joy of realisation is not manifest in it.
We will see now how a Tamil-song sung by a woman saint (Karikal Ammiyar, 5th century B. C.?) bursts with that very joy of realisation.
There are those who say that Lord God is with the celestials, let them say so;
There are again people to say that he is with the King of the Celestials, by all means let them too say so;
But "God is within me," say I.
The song is simple–but profound.