Black as Evil

[Swaminathan Madhuresan]

 Sven Ekelin wrote
>By the way, compare the Song of Songs 1:5, where the bride says:
>I am black and beautiful, ... (NRSV)
>Nigra sum sed formosa, ... (Vulgate).

Song of Songs and the ancient Indian love poems have been compared.
   Mariaselvam, Abraham. The Song of Songs and ancient Tamil love poems :
      poetry and symbolism.  Roma : Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988.

+++++++++++++++++++

 David Salmon wrote:
>Job does use "black" in close association with a discussion of the evil that
>befell him, but the context is ambiguous and may only be descriptive of the
>illness that had afflicted him:

>My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever.  (Job 30:30)

What you say may be right. Compare the given naRRiNai poem:

   koTiyai vAzi tumpi i nOy
   paTuka til amma yAn2 nin2akku uraitten2a
   mey E karumai an2Ri um cevvan2
   aRivu um karitu O aRan2 ilOy nin2akku E     (naR.277)

Here, the speaker of the poem is the Heroine, and is addressed to a black bee.
She scolds the 'tumpi' (black (male) bee)  with anger and uses "koTiyai"
(cruel/inhuman/harsh). Here, she asks if its 'aRivu'(intelligence in
the heart) is 'dark' (black)? "NOy" (sickness/disease) of the speaker is also
represented in this short poem.

In other instances which are many, the black tumpi is said to be shining like a
black jewel. "maNi niRat tumpi" (jewel-coloured-bee) in kuRuntokai 392,
aiGkuRunURu 215, naRRiNai 17 and so on. Maal-NarayaNa's color (black) is
particularly mentioned in kalittokai 46: 'mAal am ciRai maNi niRat tumpi'.







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