THE HISTORY OP MANIKKA-VACAGAE. 91 



The recital of these mental troubles, and the touclimg 

 confession of his ignorance and youthful folly are to be found 

 in many of his poems. (See especially No. 5, " Tlie sacred 

 Cento.'') They remind one most forcibly of the Confessions 

 of Saint Augustine, and we cannot help saying that in our 

 Tamil sage we find a spirit congenial to that of the great 

 doctor of the West. 



The crisis was at hand. One day when the king was 

 sitting in state in the midst of his nobles and dependant 

 kings, messengers came announcing that in a harbour in the 

 territory of the Cora king ships had arrived with multitudes 

 of horses of rare value, from the •' Aryan "* land). We may 

 suppose that this means Arabia, and the whole legend points 

 to the traffic ever carried on by coasting vessels between 

 India and the western lands, from whence not goods only 

 but ideas also came. The king at once commissioned his 

 confidential minister to proceed to Tiru-Perun-Turrai 

 C sacred-great-harbour ^') to buy these horses; and gave him 

 an enormous treasure for their purchase. He, Manikka- 

 Va9agar, accordingly set out escorted by troops composed of 

 mercenaries from every known eastern land, in more than 

 royal pomp, seated in a magnificent litter. Never was 

 progress more magnificent than that which the poet imagines. 

 It is the last gleam of the predestined saint's secular glories. 

 And so through cities, over vast wildernesses and interposing 

 hills, he made his way to the great western harbour, where he 

 was to make his purchases. The curtain here falls at the end 

 of the first act in the drama of the sage's history. His 

 secular life is really ended. Like St. Paul journeying to 

 Damascus he is on the eve of an unexpected and decisive 

 experience. 



§ 2. Qivan appears. The Sage's conversion. 



And here for a time the poet leaves him journeying on, and 

 introduces us, in the second canto, to a more splendid court 

 than that of the Pandiyan king ; to the court of (^iva Himself, 

 where He sits enthroned with Uma by his side on the silver 

 hill. (A description of this is given in NoTE X.) There the 

 god announces to the assembled deities his intention to visit 

 earth, in the form of a guru or human teacher, that he may 

 initiate and consummate the Conversion and salvation of a 



* Arya seems here to be equivalent to " foreign." 



