The Colas c12.50

c12.50

Easily the most cultured among the amusements open to the upper classes in those days were poetry, song and dance. The poets were men and women drawn from all classes; they composed verses to suit the immediate occasion and were often rewarded very well for their literary exertions. How much we owe to these occasional songs, gathered subsequently and arranged in 'the eight anthologies', must be clear from the numerous examples quoted already. The profits of poetry in this age were believed, at any rate by people of later times to be absurdly high; and the author of the *Kalingattupparaṇi* tells us that Kaḍiyalūr Rudrangaṇṇanār got for his *Paṭṭinappālai* over a million and a half gold pieces from Karikāla.⁵⁴ If legend says true, only a small part of early Tamil poetry has come down to us; but what we possess of this literature bears evidence of its great qualities. The poems, specially the shorter ones, are full of colour and true to life. They abound in fine phrases giving compact and eloquent expression to the physical and spiritual experiences of the poet.