The Taprobanian (3.1888)

48

THE TAPROBANIAN.

[April, 1888.

alone passes the ordeal. This inconsistence con-
vinces me that the ordeals are arbitrarily intro-
duced by the bard as a proper embellishment of
the bare story, and, of course, the guilty smith,
who claimed it, cannot be made to take a part,
or he would have to die, prematurely, for the
plot.
If the elephant episode was an execution,
ordered arbitrarily by the king after acquittal by
the court of enquiry, and in pursuance of his
original unjust order, this objection does not
arise, as the smith would not have to undergo it.
It is almost essential to treat the elephant episode
as true, more or less, because it is while upon the
elephant that the queen shows those signs of
secret sympathy for Kovalan which seal his doom.
An European reader might suppose that on his
triumphant acquittal his friends carried him in
state round the city upon an elephant. This,
however, would seem quite absurd to a Tamil, for
such a defiance of the king who had intended his
death would be impossible.
Minatchi’s appearance to him.
This introduction of Minatchi has no part in
the oral traditions which I have heard in Ceylon,
and is at variance with the whole force of the
argument, in which Kannakai and Kali are
supreme, and Amman relegated to an entirely
inferior position. It has evidently been inserted
since the saga became popular amongst
Vellalas to bring into respectful notice their
goddess, and to remove from her the stigma of
inferiority.
The king and ministers marked with blood.
This curious and revolting custom seems to
have had wide diffusion, and it was apparently
from a similar custom that the Jews sprinkled
their lintels with blood at the Passover, and
long ages after, at the most holy Sacrifice, cried
out, “His blood be upon us.” The Stillmore
revolting and savage habit of tasting the blood
seems merely a link of the other custom,
whether mankind degraded from a symbolical
blood-marking to it, or had refined this from the
brutal antecedent of drinking the enemy’s
blood. I cannot recollect hearing of its use
among the later Tamils or Sinhalese as part of
a judicial custom. To “ drink the blood” is,
however, still a common expression.
The restoration of life.
It is difficult to say whether this is introduced
from a known allegory or from mere wish to
impute miraculous powers to Kannakai, but the

former is the more probable. It seems to me
that there must have been a well-known allegory
of the Kanakkai worship, which represented
that goddess as stitching chaos together with her
golden thread, strung through the eye of her
golden needle, and creating life with her golden
rod, and the holy ashes. In other words,
Kannakai, the goddess, as Kanaka, the golden,
arranges chaos with the light of a planet, perhaps
the sun, as with thread from a needle, while her
golden rod of the ecliptic, striking upon the
five senses, rubbed with ashes, that is, clothed
in the composite result of the elements of
“ matter,” creates life.
I must not mislead the reader unduly, however,
by this, for though from a wide experience of
local analogy, the allegory stiikes me at once in
this light, and although the allegory correctly
applies to the worship of Kanakkai as Venus
Urania, yet this particular allegory has not occurred
to me elsewhere. The reader will, therefore, say
only that the translator’s theory is that this part
of the saga probably catches up an allegory of
the worship of Kanakkai, and anthropises it (if
the word be allowed) for purposes of the saga
as a poem, as distinguished from the saga as an
historical record. He will, in doing so, recollect
that this long saga is no doubt compiled, as
usual, from a number of sections, each of which
was a separate sacred hymn, and which would be
the work of many minds. The best treatise on
each section was gradually selected and worked
up into a liturgy as it were, the reading of
which still forms the great feature of the festival
of the goddess.
The 6000 Pandians.
I regret that I cannot find an explanation of
this expression to my satisfaction.
The burning of Madura.
This is everywhere an accepted tradition
amongst all Tamils and Sinhalese. It would seem
that Kanakkai, aided and supported by the
Idaiyars and Paraiyars, successfully invaded
Madura from Kaveri-pun-pattunam, and burned
the city on either side of the river, sparing only
the quarters of the town in which her allies were
located.
The crow as a messenger.
It is interesting to find the crow as the mes-
senger of Kali, though whether this idea is
ancient or introduced by a later bard, one cannot
decide.
{To be continued.}