The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c7.32

c7.32

Social life especially in cities like Madura had attained a high degree of refinement as could be seen from the literature of the age. It may be noted in passing that this literature was not always the work of poets who pursued poetry for its own sake. Minstrelsy was a profession, and the roving bards of the time were often not easy to satisfy, and sometimes exceedingly sensitive. We have already noted instances of princes penalized by the scarcely veiled imprecations of poets who felt they had not been hospitably treated. A song in the *Puranānūru* contains a rather humble description of these organized bands of mendicants—some of them poets of real merit, some of them musicians with all kinds of quaint instruments, who moved about, with bands of female singers and dancers, from one little fortress to another, where their advent formed one of the few distractions of life for the chieftain, alternating with his hunting expeditions and warlike raids.¹ These chieftains were not always models of courtesy or liberality, and some of them must have deserved the censures they provoked.