Saturday, February 2, 2008

About Lemuria From Tamilnet.com

Catastrophes of the past: poetic exaggeration or scientific facts?

“To the ancient Tamil world natural calamities like the tsunami that hit the east coast on 26 December 2004 is not unknown,” says professor A.Shanmugathas, head of the department of Tamil, Jaffna University. The Sangam Literature, which is more than 2000 years old, makes reference to similar natural catastrophes (perooly) that have affected the Tamil speaking world - spreading from Cape Comarin in the South to the Vindian ranges in the North. "The history records it that tidal destruction (Kadatkol) has occurred from time to time and these facts are established by the archeological excavations. They are not imaginary accounts," he adds. This is supported by modern scientific theories.





Professor Karsten M. Storetvedt, the chair in geomagnetism at the University of Bergen, Norway, and an author of the Global Wrench Theory (GWT), says that the equator regions have always been most prone to natural catastrophes like earthquakes and volcano eruptions. A part of explanation is that planet rotation and especially the difference in rotation speed between poles and equator force earth mantel to strain and to break more easily where the strain is strongest, that is at the equator regions. These tectonic processes played important role in the disappearance of the ancient continent known as Lemuria to western scholars. Sri Lanka together with India, Indonesia and Malaysia were a part of this continent. Many islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are remnants of this continent that in ancient time covered the whole area of today's ocean. Storetvedt, who seems to reject the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics, says that descriptions of cataclysms in early literature when land suddenly went underwater are logical. But they should be proven to be scientific facts. This can be done with the help of sea-floor analysis that is possible to carry out. Modern theories find supportive evidences both in ancient literature and language history.

The continent of Lemuria is referred as "Kumari Kandam" in ancient Tamil literature. Tamil is one of the world's classical languages. Tamil has continuous historical records for more than 2000 years and Tamil language was recognized as a classical language in India (beside the other being Sanscrit). Tamil does not belong to the Indo-European language family. "One can imagine the strength and magnitude of the Tidal wave required to devour a mountainous area that had existed in the ancient coastal belt of the Tamil world," says professor Shanmugathas. He also refers to records in Mahavansa, the buddhist chronicle of Sri Lanka.




















The ancient Kumari Kandam drawn with the background-knoweldge gathered from the literature references. Courtesy: Gems from the Pre Historic Past

References in Tamil records speak about devouring of landmass by the sea (kadatkol). "The earliest connected account about kadatkol occurs in the commentary on Iraiyanar akapporul," says Dr. A. Velupillai, department of religious studies, Arizona State University. Tamil poets were lamenting about "kadatkol" (devouring of the land by the sea) so often that scholars found it difficult to explain these references of devouring the land mass with towns and villages by the sea."Even though modern scholars date this commentary to the eighth century CE, the tale refers to three Tamil academies which existed for almost ten thousand years," Veluppillai adds. It is believed by some Tamil scholars that the first academy existed at southern Maturai and was terminated by sea devouring the city. The Pandya king established a second academy at Kapadapuram. Again, the sea devoured the city. The Pandya king established the third academy in present Maturai (far away from sea coast). "What is available now as Cankam literature is mentioned as productions of the third academy," says Velupillai. "The sea devouring entire sea coast cities in the Indian Ocean area was something that many modern scholars dismissed as unrealistic. It now appears very probable that this tale about devouring of land by the sea, is not just a legend, as some modern scholars surmised," he says.

"International trade ports are mentioned in the Sangam Literature in Tamil, as well as in Greek and Roman literatures. The Chola Empire had the most powerful Navy during its time. Even as late as in the period of 10th - 15th Century Tamil language was the language of sea trade in the Indian Ocean," says professor Sittampalam. "Tamils engaged in sea trade spread to other countries, especially in Asia and took along their culture and language. For example, there was found a 2000-years-old pot in Egypt that has Tamil letters on it. The 14th Century inscription was found in Galle, Sri Lanka, has inscriptions is in three languages: Tamil, Chinese and Persian".

The Cilappatikaram and the Manimekalai, the two earliest epics/narrative poems in Tamil, both refer to a vast landmass that was swallowed by a "cataclysmic landslip" or "on-rush of the sea." These landslips have submerged vast territory that was called Kumai Nadu or Kumari Kandam, known also as Lemuria to western scholars. "Even though there is some controversy on the exact date of these works, certain inferences can be made. Large scale destruction by kadatkol seems to have made deep impressions to the Tamil psyche," says to Dr. Velupillai. The Manimekalai refers in graphic terms to the sea devouring Poompukar or Kavirippoompaddinam, the Chola capital, port and emporium of foreign trade. The New Indian Express of December 2002 published an article that Poompukar site could be the cradle of world civilization, mentioning discovery of archaeological remains of a port city under the sea and hypotheses of well-known scholars. "Reading this with the background of the magnificent description of the prosperity of this cosmopolitan port-city, it is possible now to visualize that a huge tragedy of that magnitude could have taken place," says Dr. Velupillai. Tamil scholars note that there have been at least three major floods according to the references they find in Tamil literature and vast part of ancient literature was lost as a result of such events."Adiyarkkunallar, the medieval commentator to the Cilappatikaram, gives intriguing details about lands devoured by the sea. He mentions about Ezh Tenku nadu, Ezh Panai nadu, Ezh Kunakarai nadu, etc., listing seven such regions. As Ezh can mean 'seven', some later interpreters say that 49 regions (7 by 7) were devoured by the sea," says Veluppillai. Some Tamil historians argue that the political power of the Tamils diminished due to repeated re-locations and vast damage that was caused to the ancient Tamil homeland by the deluges. What we know of the antiquity of Tamil civilization seems to be top of an iceberg. More exciting and interesting prehistory of Tamils may emerge from the jolt applied by the tsunami. Scientific details relating to these catastrophic events, particularly the correlation of the available socio-anthropological knowledge from the Tamil literature with geological research is yet to be found or ascertained. There is ample scope for Tamil scholars, socio-anthropologists and geologists to do further research on these topics.


Some records from ancient Tamil literature

Lemuria - Kumarinadu Tamilians Olders civilization



Lemuria (continent)


Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography. Lemuria has been rendered superfluous by modern understanding of plate tectonics. Although sunken continents do exist — see Zealandia in the Pacific and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean — there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria.





Though Lemuria has passed out of the realm of conventional science, it has been adopted by occult writers, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic



Though the living modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar and several surrounding islands, the biogeography of extinct lemurs extending from Pakistan to Malaysia inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the geologist Philip Sclater in an article "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which he named "Lemuria" for its lemurs.







Kumari Kandam and Lemuria

Kumari Kandam is a sunken kingdom sometimes compared with Lemuria (cf. works of G. Devaneyan, Tamil: ஞானமுத்தன் தேவநேயன்). According to these modernist interpretations of motifs in classical Tamil literature — the epics Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai that describe the submerged city of Puhar — the Dravidians originally came from land south of the present day coast of South India that became submerged by successive floods. There are various claims from Tamil authors that there was a large land mass connecting Australia and the present day Tamil Nadu coast.
It is interesting to note that Madame Blavatsky described the Lemurians (her third root race) as being colored black and described the Negroid race, the Dravidians and the Australoids, Papuans and Melanesians as being descended from them.









Plates in the crust of the earth, according to the plate tectonics theory

Plate tectonics theory accepted by all science community...
Kumari Kandam (குமரிக்கண்டம் Kumarikkaṇṭam) is the name of a legendary sunken landmass said to have been located to the south of present-day Kanyakumari District at the southern tip of India in the Indian Ocean
The Legend in Sangam Literature
Sangam literature describes an area of land known as Kumari Kandam, which lay to the south of Dravida country, which had been lost to the sea in two successive inundations [1] [2] [3]. The two inundations are said to mark the division between the three sangam periods. Geological features described in the literature include two main rivers of Kumari Kandam as the Pagruliyaru and the Kumari. It is also believed to have had numerous great cities with great monuments and the foremost among those cities were the two first and second cities of Madurai. Both the first and the second Tamil literary Sangam Eras, the Muthal Sangam and the Idaii Sangam, were said to have been held in those two respective cities of Madurai. South Indian Traditions give the two Sangam periods antiquities ranging in tens of thousands of years with a timeline of about 10,000 B.C to the second. Both the Sangam Eras were supposed to have been terminated by deluges which submerged the continent.
The Legend in Medieval Period

Adiyarkkunallar, described the distance between the Prahuli and Kumari rivers as 700 kavathams. This distance has been interpreted as about 7,000 modern miles (11,000 km).
In Tamil national mysticism

In modern Dravidian ethnic nationalist literature, Kumari Kandam or "Lemuria" was the "cradle of civilization", the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular. These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by the Tanittamil Iyakkam, notably by self-taught Dravidologist Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.
R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamilnadu, in 1991 claimed to have deciphered the Indus script as Tamil, following the methodology recommended by his teacher Devaneya Pavanar, presenting the following timeline (cited after Mahadevan 2002):
ca. 200,000 to 50,000 BC: evolution of "the Tamilian or Homo Dravida",
ca. 200,000 to 100,000 BC: beginnings of the Tamil language
50,000 BC: Kumari Kandam civilisation
20,000 BC: A lost Tamil culture of the Easter Island which had an advanced civilisation
16,000 BC: Lemuria submerged
6087 BC: Second Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king3031 BC: A Chera prince in his wanderings in the Solomon Island saw wild sugarcane and started cultivation in Tamilnadu.1780 BC: The Third Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king7th century BC: Tolkappiyam (the earliest extant Tamil grammar)
Mathivanan uses "
Aryan Invasion" rhetoric to account for the fall of this civilization:
"After imbibing the mania of the Aryan culture of destroying the enemy and their habitats, the Dravidians developed a new avenging and destructive war approach. This induced them to ruin the forts and cities of their own brethren out of enmity".
Mathivanan claims his interpretation of history is validated by the discovery of the "Jaffna seal", a seal bearing a
Tamil-Brahmi inscription assigned by its excavators to the 3rd century BC (but claimed by Mathivanan to date to 1600 BC).
A
supposed map is available which shows a large land mass in the Indian Ocean stretching from Madagascar and East Africa in the West to Southeast Asia and Malaysia in the East.


"Lemuria" in Tamil nationalist mysticist literature, connecting Madagascar, South India and Australia (covering most of the Indian Ocean). Mount Meru stretches southwards from Sri Lanka. The distance from Madagascar to Australia is about 4,200 miles

References^ Shilappadikaram - ???
^ Manimekhalai - ???
^ Kalittogai - ???
Iravatham Mahadevan, Aryan or Dravidian or Neither? A Study of Recent Attempts to Decipher the Indus Script (1995-2000) EJVS (ISSN 1084-7561) vol. 8 (2002) issue 1 (March 8).[1]
Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories University of California Press (2004), ISBN 978-0520244405.