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OCTOBER, 1926] TWO TAMIL HYMNS FOR THE MARGAZHI FESTIVAL
The festival as an institution is not altogether a dead institution. It would appear a festival like that is still celebrated in the month of Mârgali in the Malabar country, where women enjoy themselves in a bath in groups with songs and festivities, more or less of a similar chacracter. As far as it is possible to make out the songs seem to be the songs addressed to the God of Love, and the object seems to be the securing of husbands of their own liking. The poetess Åndal in the Tiruppavai dacad (10) describes the festival in the month of Tai where this God of Love is worshipped with a view to securing the desired husband. Whether the Malabar festival has reference to the Mârgali bath, or the Tai festival cannot be decided without the full details of the festival being obtained, which must be left over for another occasion. Neither of them seems to have any connection with the Holi festival as it ordinarily obtains in Northern India, and, to perhaps a smaller extent, in the South. It seems further to be distinct from the so-called Mârgali or Tiruvâdirai festival. The Tai festival according to Andâl seems to have lasted on to the Panguni month, and was a festival intended to propitiate the God of Love. As such it has to be regarded as quite distinct from the Margali festival. The Malabar festival already referred to seems to be one more akin to the Tai festival than to the Mârgali bath, having regard merely to the object aimed at, and the God to be propitiated.
It is interesting to note that an inscription of 1530 in the Govindaraja Temple at Tirupati refers to the festival of the Margali but in connection with Andâl which began on the 24th of the month and lasted for 7 days, the festival actually coming to a close on the Kanu day i.e., the 2nd day of the month of Tai under the current system.
Two of the Malabar songs were copied and sent on to me at my request and on examination prove to be songs relating to the abduction of Subhadra by the Pânḍava hero Arjuna, her cousin. This is an indication that the festival such as is celebrated at present is not the original one, if there had been such, but one into which the cult of Krishna had been introduced. The purpose of Goda in the first poem is merely to give expression to her enjoyment of the object of her devotion, that is, Vishnu. In the form of Krishna he is the beloved of the girl folk of the cowherd settlement at Gokulam. Goda puts herself subjectively in the position of the whole body of girls and enjoys mentally all that she believes they had enjoyed of him. This has the outward appearance of mere desire of the flesh, but is actually nothing more than a mere mental attitude, and as such free from all taint of physical love. To those that cannot rise to the height of this abstraction, it presents the carnal aspects and may even lead to abuse, as in fact it has in its onward development. But the actual purpose of the author is by a mere recital of her intellectual experience to bring home to those that may not have attained to her level, the idea of the bliss there is in it.
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In Mânikkavasagar's poem a similar purpose runs through it. The subject is brought with severe simplicity to the ultimate idea of the prayer of the girls that they may have for their husbands those devoted to Siva. Otherwise the machinery is the same. The songs are sung in praise of Siva-the pleasure in the sight, the delight in the proximity and the ineffable happiness of union with the Godhead. This poem is given a Tantric exposition as the other one a philosophic, and both of them may be brought into the realm of philosophy each in its own particular way-S.K.
