தமிழர் மதம்
33
6
and Uma There can therefore be little doubt that temples dedicated to Siva built both on small scale and large, just as we find them now all over India, existed five or six thousand years ago, as is clear from mention made of them in the Tamil Lyrics composed about 3500 B.C.
As times advanced, conceptions of God's various function and of his various manifestations in various forms also multiplied that images representing them all came to be made successively and set up for worship in one and the same temple of Siva. Of such images those of Murukan and Ambalavanan constitute the earliest after the erection of Sivalinga and Umasiva. The form of Murukan represents God's eternally existing youthful personality, while the dancing posture of Lord Ambalavanan intimates the unceasing activity of God that sets the whole universe in everlasting motion. For Further representations of God's functions and what they import the Tamil text must be looked into.
Besides the daily divine service performed in the temples of Lord Siva, there were also celebrated many festivals on days specially appointed for them in every year with the object of exhibiting the dealings of God with his pious and devoted servants. Of such sacred festivals, the worshipping of God in the great conflagration of fire called the festival of Karthikai, seems to have been celebrated more than two thousand years ago, since a full description of which is given in the Tamil poem composed at the beginning of the Christian era. That some other festivals also were held with great solemnity and magnificence in pre-Christian times is evidenced by Tamil classical poems and their commentaries produced before and after the beginning of the Christian era.
Now, the sections twentyeight, twentynine and thirty return to a searching inquiry of the matrimonial rite as already indicated. How did the marriage rite originate in the past, who were its originators the Aryans or the Tamils, what were the forms into which the rite divided itself between the two peoples, how was it conducted by them, how does the ancient wedding ceremony of
