The romance begins with the accidental meeting of a young man and a damsel in a grove. It is a case of love at first sight. They plight their words to one another and enter the married state. No rites are gone through but the simple plighting of the faith, but that was sufficient in the heroic age of Tamil society to legalise the marriage. It corresponds exactly to the Gândharva marriage of the Sanskrit Dharma Shâstras. The marriage however is kept secret by the lovers and they are at first inclined to wait for a favourable opportunity to make it public. But neither the husband nor the wife have sufficient patience to wait for that opportunity. They are impatient to rush to each other’s arms (1131 and 1138) before the minds of the parents and relations of the girl can be prepared to receive the news of their secret marriage. But lovers in the Tamil land had perfected in the course of ages an ingenious machinery to stead them under a dilemma of this kind. The lover undergoes a sort of martyrdom both physical and moral in order to induce the people of the village and the parents of his ladylove to pity his distraction and offer him of their own accord the object of his passion. A few branches of the palmyra tree are joined together so as to enable a man to sit astride on the united plank, the lover sits on it, and a number of his friends carry him in that posture into the village singing passionate songs of love. The edges of the palmyra branches being rough and hard, the “riding of the palmyra stalk” or the palmyra “horse,” as it is called, is a veritable penance. The young folks of the village mock at the lovelorn pilgrim and perhaps refer to the object of his passion by name even (Ch. 115). The outcry reaches the ears of the parents and other relations of the maiden in the village. They reproach her for entering into matrimony without their consent (1147), but there is no remedy now but to give their consent, and everything ends happily for the lovers. The idea of the “palmyra horse” may be compared with the following verses of the Twelfth Night, I. v:—
Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house
With loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night,Holla your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, Olivia!
Now the pair live a happy married life for some time, but the husband has soon to part for the wars from which, he tells his wife, he would soon return laden with glory and wealth. The wife cannot bear even the thought of separation. She will surely die if he leaves her. “If there is anything about not parting, speak it to me: but if it is only thy speedy return, tell it to those who will survive till then.” (1151). But he persuades her to allow him to part, and goes away. Wars and battles, however, do not hurry on to an end for the sake of young ladies, and the husband does not return within the appointed time. The pangs and pains of the wife’s lovesickness are described by the poet in 11 beautiful chapters, all the verses of which are gems sparkling with the light of fancy or expressing some of the tenderest emotions of the love-oppressed heart. The husband at last returns. The wife at first sulks because of his overstay, but cannot really withstand the passion of her heart to clasp him to her arms. Bouderie as one of the incidents of married life is described in three beautiful chapters, which are the last of the book; and as you read them you almost see the pouting lips and indignant eyes, and hear the hard words of the wife to the husband. But every pet ends in a petting which is only the more enjoyable for the quarrel that preceded it. For “bouderie is the salt of love.”
It is because the second section deals with the actions and feelings of the chaste wife in the absence of her lord that the author has given it the title of Chastity.
The above is a very inadequate description of the treasure which the reader will find spread out before him by the poet for his enlightenment as well as enjoyment in the 133 chapters of his book. Whether he speaks of moral duties or state policy, of the principles of action to be followed in order to succeed in life, or of the varying emotions in the trembling hearts of lovers, everywhere Thiruvalluvar has sounded the utmost depths of human thought. The prophets of the world have not emphasised the greatness and power of the Moral Law with greater insistence or force; Bhîshma or Kauṭilya or Kâmandaka or Râm Dâs or Vishnu Sharman or Macchiavelli have no more subtle counsel to give on the conduct of the State; “Poor Richard” has no wiser saw for the raising up of clever businessmen; and Kâlidâsa or Shakespeare have no deeper knowledge of the lovers’ heart and
