A section from the journey
Mayon, the Pastoral Dark One
If Murugan is god of the hills, Mayon is god of the forest pastures. His name means the dark one. He is a herder among cows, gentle and lovely. The Tamils saw in him the great god Vishnu, and his cowherd form Krishna. One Sangam book, the Paripadal, holds warm hymns of praise to him, an early Tamil song of love for Vishnu.
Leave the high hills now and come down into the soft country: the forest edges and the cattle pastures, the green land the Tamils called mullai. This is the land of patient waiting, where one who loves waits faithfully for the beloved to return. And this land, too, has its god.
His name is . It means the dark one, the black-blue one, the colour of a sky heavy with rain. He is a pastoral god, at home among the cows and the herders, gentle and lovely to look upon.
Now, if you have walked with us through earlier ages, a picture may stir in you. A dark, beautiful god among cowherds. A flute, perhaps. The Tamils felt it too. They saw in Mayon the great god Vishnu, the preserver, and above all his cowherd form, Krishna.
This is worth pausing on. Vishnu and Krishna belong to the wider Hindu world we have already met. And here they are, loved in the deep south, in their own Tamil dress, as the dark herder of the green country. The same god, met by a new people, in a new land, in a new tongue.
There is a quiet treasure to show you here. Among the Sangam books is one called the . Unlike most Tamil poems, which sing of love and war, the Paripadal holds hymns of devotion. Some are sung to Murugan. And some are sung to Mayon, which is to say, to Vishnu.
Think of what that means. These are among the oldest songs of loving praise to Vishnu in the Tamil language. The devotion we have been tracing, that warm reaching of the heart toward a god, is not given to Murugan alone. It opens toward Vishnu as well, early, and from the heart.
And notice the gentle wonder in it. A god of the wider Hindu world is being sung in a Dravidian tongue, in the far south, among Tamil cowherds and Tamil poets. Two great streams of one civilization are already touching here, softly, without fuss. We will look straight at that braiding very soon.
The Tamils met a god from far away and made him their own, the dark herder of their own green fields. When something good reaches you from far off, what does it take to truly make it yours, rather than leave it a stranger?
Each Tamil landscape has its god. The hills belong to Murugan. The forest and pasture, the mullai country, belong to Mayon. His name means the dark one, the black-blue one, like a rain-heavy sky. He is a pastoral god, at home among cattle and herders, in the soft green land of waiting. The Tamils came to know him as their own form of Vishnu, the great preserver-god, and especially as Krishna, the dark cowherd who plays the flute. Here we find something quietly important. One of the Sangam books, the Paripadal, contains hymns of devotion. Some are sung to Murugan, and some to Mayon, that is, to Vishnu. These are among the earliest songs of loving praise to Vishnu in the Tamil tongue. So even in this old age, the warm devotion that we are watching take root is not given to one god only. It reaches toward Vishnu too. The streams of north and south are already touching: a pan-Indian god, sung in a Dravidian language, in the green pastures of the deep south.
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