Myth of Kumari Kandam

Lost Land and the Myth of Kumari Kandam

(S.C. JAYAKARAN)

Abstract: The concept of Lemuria was born in the 1860s when

certain British geologists noted the striking similarity between

rock formations and fossils found in India and Africa. There is

confusion between the concept of the lost land south of India

linked with the literary history of Tamil tradition and the myth

of the lost land of Lemuria. With reference to the records of

sea level fluctuations, climatic changes, glacial advances and

glacial retreats, this article tries to trace the factors that had

given rise to the myth of Kumari Kandam and briefly touches

upon the development of the European concept of Lemuria

that found its way into the Tamil literary tradition.

Sangam classics refer to a populated land, which was submerged in the sea.

The core of this tradition is that a substantial land mass was swallowed by

the ocean in bygone ages. There is an obvious confusion between the above

tradition and the myth of the lost land of Lemuria that was perpetuated by

certain European mystics. Maps of the lost land were produced taking the

idea from the palaeo-continent of Gondwana that existed about 350 millions

years ago, which broke up into the different continents.

The concept of the lost land south of India is linked with the literary

history of the Tamil language. The crucial question is whether the land

referred to as Kumari was as large as a continent. If the oral traditions

and the subsequent writings exaggerated the size and age of that

landmass, what was the background of this exaggeration? This paper

traces the factors that had given rise to the myth of Kumari Kandam.

In the process it briefly touches upon the development of the European

concept of Lemuria that found its way into the Tamil literary tradition.

The reference to the tradition about three Tamil Sangam (Academy of poets)

is noted in Iraiynar Kalviyalurai, attributed to Nakkirar. According to this

commentary, Pandya Kings patronised Tamil poets in their capital, where

the Sangam was located. According to tradition, the Mudal Sangam, located

in Thenmadurai, had 4449 poets, a list that included Sivaperuman and

Kumaravel, Agasthiyar and about 89 kings, and lasted for 4440 years.

Paripadal, Mudunarai, Mudukuruku, Kalariyavirai and the treatise on grammar

called Peragathiyam were reported to have been written during this time.

After the sea swallowed Thenmadurai, the capital was shifted to Kapatapuram

and the second or Idai Sangam was established. Idai Sangam, which had 3700

poets, functioned for 3700 years until a deluge destroyed Kaptapuram. The

literary works Agathiyam, Tholkappiam, Boothpuranam, Maapuranam were

supposed to have been produced during this time. After the deluge, the

capital of the Pandyas was shifted to the present Madurai. Here the last or

Kadai Sangam was established and with 449 poets the academy functioned

for 1850 years. That the three Sangam functioned for 9990 years is the gist of

the calculations, which has been debated. However, historians consider the

first three centuries AD as the Sangam period. Sangam literature refers to the

corpus of literary works of this period.

There are certain references in Tamil Sangam classics to a landmass

where people lived and which was swallowed up by the sea. The Tamil

tradition about a large continent destroyed by a deluge was committed

to writing in detail after the 10^th century, by commentators like Nakirar

in his commentary on Irayanar Akapporulurai. Nachinarkinyar and

Adiarkunallar followed him. Some of the few important references from

Tamil Sangam is a reference to a Pandya King who won over kingdoms

in Imayam (The Himalayas) and Gangai (River Ganges) to compensate

for his land that was lost to the deluge. Certain scholars such as Devaneya

Pavaanar consider that the deluge under reference was probably the one

that destroyed Thenmadurai, which had the Mudal Tamil Sangam.

When the southern part of Kumari was swallowed by the sea,

Kapatapuram (otherwise referred to as Kathavam or Akdvaai) was

reported to have been made the capital of the Pandyas. This also

went underwater in subsequent floods. According to Adiyarku Nallar,

this poem from Mullai Kalipaadal indicates that the Pandya King

resettled the survivors of the deluge in certain Chera and Chola territories.

There are references to deluges in the early Tamil literature. Those

who wrote the commentaries centuries later exaggerated the references to

deluges in Silapathigaram and Kalithogai. According to the commentators

there were 49 (Nadu) countries in the lost land of Kumari. The advocates of

Kumari Kandam interpreted the term Nadu as country. There are many small

towns and villages referred to as Nadu in Tamil and more in Malayalam.

Nadu basically referred to a settlement as opposed to Kadu, forest. In the

above references there is no mention of the term Kandam, referring to land

the size of a continent, though according to Pingala Nikandu (457) Kandam

means a country. According to Aravanan, (Thamilargalin Thayagam) the term

Nadu probably refers to areas the size of a present day Taluk (Taluk is an

administrative unit consisting of a cluster of villages in a district) and should

not be mistaken for the size of a country. According to commentators, the

distance between the river Kumari and the river Pahruli was 700 Katham,

which according to one calculation is about 770 km. Was there a land this

size south of Tamil Nadu? And if not, what was the land that was exaggerated

by the commentators of Sangam literature?

The concept of the lost continent of Lemuria:

The concept of Lemuria was born in the 1860s when certain British geologists

noted the striking similarity between rock formations and fossils found in

India and Africa. It was also noticed that the formations of the Permian age

in India, South Africa, Australia and South America had similar formations

and index fossils. Since continents at that time were thought to be immobile

and the flora and fauna of the land could not have crossed the oceans, the

possible existence of land bridges like the one that probably connected India

and Southern Africa and continents that went under water were postulated.

Ernst Heinrich Haekal referred to this hypothetical land bridge in his theory

on the distribution of lemurs that were found in Madagascar, since the

other pro-simians related to the lemur, like the Loris are distributed in

Africa, India and the Malayan Peninsula. According to Haekal, the

hypothetical bridge stayed above water long enough for the migration of the

lemur. Philip L. Sclator christened this hypothetical land bridge ‘Lemuria’

because of its association with lemurs. This happened long before the

concepts of continental drift and plate tectonics provided the explanations

for the similarity and distribution of formations and fossils in different

strata in different continents. It was clarified that the continents did not

submerge or disappear and a land bridge like Lemuria never existed.

In 1888, Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society,

incorporated the concept of the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis in

her controversial Secret Doctrines while explaining the evolution of man,

with the aim of establishing the superiority of Aryans. Her information, it

was claimed, was based on esoteric ancient books from the East and messages

received through transference and clairvoyant trances. Later, some members

of the Theosophical Society published many essays on the lost lands of

Lemuria and Atlantis, adding more details and embellishments.

According to the teachings of Theosophical Society, man evolved

through seven successive root races each of which populated and occupied

different continents. The lost continent of Lemuria, which eventually

submerged, was occupied by the third root race called the Lemurians,

primitive beings. They were followed by the fourth sub-race who interbred

with beasts, and the more advanced Atlanteans, who inhabited the continent

of Atlantis, replaced them. The Aryans, descendants of Alanteans, are the

fifth root race and were considered as the pinnacle of evolution as it were.

W. Scott Elliot, a staunch Theosophist published in 1904 ‘The Lost Lemuria

with Two Maps Showing Distribution of Land Areas at Different Periods’.

The racial undertones of the following sentences from his book need to be

noted: “It may be remembered from previous writings on the subject that it

was from the fifth or Semitic sub-race of the Fourth Root Race that was

chosen the nucleus destined to become our great Fifth or Aryan Root race”.

(p42) This book does not mention the Dravidians or the ancient language,

Tamil anywhere in its far-fetched explanations. The book also states:

“Students of Theosophy are aware that, up to the present day, no one

belonging to our humanity has been in a position to undertake the exalted

office of Manu, though it is stated that the founding of the coming Sixth

Root Race will be entrusted to the guidance of one of our Masters of Wisdom

- one who, while belonging to our humanity, has nevertheless reached a

most exalted level in the Divine Hierarchy”, which makes it clear that this

writing is basically esoteric in nature though a scientific veneer was given to this information.

In 1931, Harvey Spencer Lewis, the founder of the mystical society

called the Rosicrucians wrote under the pseudonym ‘Wishar S. Cerve’.

‘Lemuria, The Lost Continent of Pacific. Though in his introduction he

wrote that he ‘had not attempted to make the book a treatise on the subjects

of anthropology or anthropometry, nor in the fields of archaeological and

geological research’, he wrote elaborately on the evolution of Lemurians

and gave details of their lifestyle, their high development, advanced

technology and their comprehensions of the psychic and spiritual laws. He

also wrote about floating continents, California and the West coast of the

United States as being parts of Lemuria and of their subsequent destruction.

He wrote, “The Indians or Hindus, constituting perhaps the purest blood

of the Lemurians and known as the pure line of Aryan speaking people,

were found in a more or less primitive state in India in 2000 BC”. (P-143).

Though he has never mentioned the Dravidians or Tamil, the advocates of

the Kumari Kandam concept, eager to establish the antiquity of Tamil,

profusely quoted him. Certain scientists branded theories postulated by

Wishar Cerve as pseudo scientific later on. Maps of the lost land were

produced, taking the idea from the palaeo continent of Gondwana, which

had existed long before the advent of human ancestry. The narratives about

a lost land called Lemuria, which was speculated in the 1880, found their

way into colonial India. This was about the time when the Puranas and

folklore began to permeate historic and geographic knowledge as though

they were scientific facts. For instance, the Puranic geography of an axial

mountain called Meru as the centre of Jambudvipa (Sanskrit) or Navalan Theevu

(Tamil) was accepted and later on these names were attributed to certain

parts of Lemuria giving it acceptability among the Tamils. The speculations

about drifting continents and submerged land bridges also fuelled the

speculations of catastrophes that destroyed the land.

In the 1920s, with Tamil revivalism and the efforts to counter Aryan

and associated Sanskrit dominance, the concept of Lemuria was married to

the notion of the lost land referred to in Sangam literature. To this land, the

name Kumari Kandam was given, though nowhere in literature is this referred

to as Kandam, meaning a continent. The writings of Wishar Cerve and maps

of Scott Elliot were brought into Tamil writings by K. Appadurai in his

book Kumari Kandam allathu Kadal Konda Thennadu. Lemuria was given the

Tamil name Kumari Kandam, meaning the continent of Kumari and was

hailed as the Tamil homeland and for some, as the cradle of civilisation.

Names from Sangam classics were given to the mountain ranges, rivers,

places and areas. In the 1930s, the term found its way into certain Tamil

textbooks. Filmmaker P. Neelakandan made a 30-minute short film titled

Kumari Kandam under the auspices of the Fifth Tamil International

Conference. This film depicts Lemuria with its northern part being Tamil

land, the cradle of civilisation that existed before the Himalayas rose as

mountains from the sea of Tethys. This is a classic example of how the

geological time scale was misunderstood. The sea of Tethys existed about

135 millions years ago and the appearance of human beings on earth

happened only fifty million years back. Thus, Tamil enthusiasts linked

Lemuria, a figment of European imagination, inadvertently, to the lost land

referred to in the Sangam literature. In the middle of the last century, when

theories of continental drift, plate tectonics and sea floor spreading, gave an

understanding of the distribution of plant and animals, different formations

and fossils, the speculations about land bridges and lost continents like

Lemuria faded into obscurity elsewhere in the world, but not quite as yet in

Thailand.

The lost land - Sea level changes:

Geology emerged as a professional scientific discipline in the late 19^thcentury.

During this time both the scientific and popular imagination were dominated

by Biblical accounts of creations and deluges. Dramatic geological events

were attributed to catastrophes like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Eventually the catastrophic theories were dismissed by sound geological

explanations. Since the early part of the last century, major strides have

been made in geological and geophysical understanding of the earth. The

major findings are as follows: 1) In 1912, Alfred Wegener, a German

meteorologist explained the continental drift and reconstructed the ancient

landmasses carefully, on the basis of geological, geophysical and

palaeontological evidences. F.B Taylor, an American had also independently

put forward a similar theory about the same time. 2) In 1924, British geologist

Arthur Holmes explained that the convection current in the mantle could

cause continents to drift. 3) The pattern of ridges and trenches of the

convection currents were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s. 4) The theory

of plate tectonics advanced in the late 1960s has had a revolutionary effect

on earth sciences. In 1962, the American Geologist Harry Hess explained

that continental drift could be explained by sea floor spreading. Frederick

Vine and Drummond Mathews, two students of Cambridge University,

pointed out the zebra patterns of the mapped magnetic anomalies of the

ocean floor to support sea floor spreading. In 1966, the concept of sea floor

spreading was established by independent oceanographic data involving

micro fossils, sediments of the sea floor, measure of heat flow from the

earth’s interior, palaeo magnetic and seismic study. Finally in 1968, the United

States commissioned the deep-sea drilling ship Glomar Challenger that drilled

and collected core samples from the sea floor. This major exercise in

oceanographic exploration proved beyond doubt the validity the global

tectonic theory. 5) The study of oceans, including their chemistry, biology,

geology and physics has highly developed in the last century since the first

oceanic sounding in 1840 by James Clark, who measured a depth of 3,700m

below sea level. Subsequently, improved coring devices enlarged our

collective knowledge of the oceans. The actual topography of the deep oceans

had been mapped by echo-soundings and ultra-sonic signals. And in the

1940s, seismic methods were also used to understand the ocean floor.

6) Evidence of former glaciations on a wide scale became overwhelmingly

conclusive in the last century. The last Ice Age caused the fragmentation of

homo sapiens, and the enormous environmental changes that took place with

global warming caused profound influence on the pre-history of mankind.

During the past two million years, there have been five major glacial

advances and five glacial retreats as the globe began to warm, the last of the

period is our present, Holocene. Extensive studies have been made to

understand global warming during the interglacial periods, and interglacial

sediments have been subjected to meticulous research to establish the age

and palaeo-geographical conditions in many parts of the world. In the pre-

historic studies of coastal areas, it is crucial to understand the sea level

changes. For instance, about 18,000 years back, during the time of the last

Ice Age, the ice sheets in the poles spread much wider and the sea level was

more than 100m lower than the present day sea level, exposing a large area

of land along the continental shelf. At this time, Siberia was connected to

Alaska and along this land bridge, the peopling of the Americas and

migrations of animals happened over a long period. At this time, the

landmass of the present day Papua New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania

were joined together as were the British Isles with Europe. Since the last Ice

Age, the level of the Indian Ocean was lowered just as that of the rest of the

oceans of the world. Sri Lanka was connected to the Indian Peninsula by a

landmass, which now lies under the Gulf of Mannar. In the following 8,000

years, as the globe warmed large icy masses and glaciers melted resulting

in sea levels rising in stages and inundating low lying lands, the portion of

the continental shelf of the South Indian Peninsula and the land that

connected to Sri Lanka also went underwater as the sea level rose.

Records of sea level fluctuations and related climatic changes are

preserved in the seabed in the form of layered sediments. They can be

studied through data like faunal contents and nature of sediments. Rajiv

Nigam and Hashimi of the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa have

done extensive work on the sea level rise, analysing sediments for

microfossils such as pollens and foramanifera to determine palaeo climate

and also to date corals from the continental shelf in the west coast of

peninsular India. The team studied marine sediments to generate proxy

climate records to decipher the changes in palaeo sea levels. Nigam and

Henriques had developed regional models for palaeo depth determination,

based on planktonic percentage of foraminifera in surface sediments of the

Arabian Sea. The significant results of the study on palaeo sea levels are

i) that the sea level was lower by 100 m about 14,500 years before present, and

ii) 60m about 10,000 years before present and iii) that during the last

10,000 years, there has been three major episodes of sea level fluctuations.

These changes in sea levels have affected human settlements.

Now that the status of the periodic sea level rise had been established,

it is easy to decipher the configuration of the coastline, giving certain

allowances to tectonic activities and deposition of silt at the confluence of

rivers, wherever applicable. The Naval Hydrographic Institute, Dehradun

has produced hydro-graphic charts (INT 717071 - X986 to the scale 1:10,000,000

and INT 7007706-1973 of scale 1:3,500,000) pertaining to the Cape Comarin -

Gulf of Mannar, where the depth to the sea floor was surveyed basically

with echo-sounders to indicate the sea floor contours with great accuracy. It

is possible to demarcate the land lost to the sea from inundation maps that

indicate that the significant changes in the coastline south of India because

of post-glacial inundation. The author has prepared inundation maps based

on the bathymetric contours and taking sea level curve of Central West Coast

of India (Rajiv Nigam etal Refer to plate 1) to work out the configuration of

the coastline of south of India since the last Ice Age.

According to this graph, for example, about 14,500 years ago, the sea

level was lower by approximately 100m than the present sea level. The land

between the present coast and the bathymetric contour of 100 m roughly

indicates the land that was exposed during that time. In other words, if you

were to hypothetically remove 100 m of seawater from the sea, the land that

went under water will be exposed (Refer to Plate 2). That time, the present

Gulf of Mannar was a landmass connecting Sri Lanka with Peninsular India

and approximately 36,000 sq. km. of land mass was exposed. The sea was

about 80 km east, south and west of the present day Cape Comarin, exposing

a triangular mass of 6,500 sq. km adjoining the Cape. The sea was 25-35 km

wider near Cuddalore and about 25 km wider near Colombo (Refer to plate

-3). Due to the increased rate of global warming between 12,000 to 10,000

years BP (before present), the sea level rose almost 50 m inundating the low

lying lands and covering a major part of the exposed continental shelf.

About 10,000 years ago, the sea level was about 50 m lower than the

present sea level. At this time, the land extended about 25 km south of the

Cape and the coast was about 40 km broader than the present coastline

along the east and west, which made about 1,000 sq. km. of land exposed

near Cape Comarin. Rameswaram and Mannar were joined by land and the

land that extended in the present day Gulf of Mannar was a 2,500 sq. km

stretch of land marked by sedimentary formations and coral reefs. As the

research of Rajiv Nigam indicates, sea levels continued to rise and reached

the present level around 6,000 years back. This is about the time when Sri

Lanka evolved as an island.

Between 4,000 to 3,500 years ago, heavy rains apart from melting of

snow also contributed to the sea level rise. As a result, the sea level rose

above the present level by a couple of meters and fell to the present level

about 2,000 years back. Sea level changes had left their signature on

archaeological events. Recent studies, including DNA analyses of fossils of

early men, indicate that they came out of Africa as early as 800,000 years

before. Their descendants migrated to the Far East, probably along the coastal

areas adjacent to Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, and then north into China

and south into Sumatra. As the sea levels rose, resulting in periodic flooding

and deluges, pre-historic settlements that were located in the low lying

coastal lands and the exposed continental shelf were inundated by the rising

water. The people who lived in the coastal area of the Indian peninsula and

Sri Lanka, and who escaped the deluges, perpetuated the oral tradition of

lost land. This, in my opinion, gave rise to the legend of Kumari.

which deals with the mysterious origins of civilisation, in the chapter titled

The Quest of Kumari Kandam has the following to say: “The work of

Glenn Milne and other inundation specialists confirms that between 12,000

and 10,000 years ago, India’s Dravidian peninsula and its overlying islands

would indeed have been far larger than they are today, but were in the

process of being swallowed by the rising seas at the end of the Ice Age. The

inundation maps show that significant coastline changes took place in the

south during the last millennia or so of the Last Glacial Maximum.”

certain British geologists noted the striking similarity between

rock formations and fossils found in India and Africa. There is

confusion between the concept of the lost land south of India

linked with the literary history of Tamil tradition and the myth

of the lost land of Lemuria. With reference to the records of

sea level fluctuations, climatic changes, glacial advances and

glacial retreats, this article tries to trace the factors that had

given rise to the myth of Kumari Kandam and briefly touches

Upon the development of the European concept of Lemuria

that found its way into the Tamil literary tradition.

from a large continent, which was destroyed by deluges. The Tamil

The core of this tradition is that a substantial land mass was swallowed by

the ocean in bygone ages. There is an obvious confusion between the above

tradition and the myth of the lost land of Lemuria that was perpetuated by

certain European mystics. Maps of the lost land were produced taking the

idea from the palaeo-continent of Gondwana that existed about 350 millions

years ago, which broke up into the different continents.Graham Hancock,

the author of the well-known book Underworld,

here is a tradition among the Tamils to believe that their ancestors

came Sangam classics refer to a populated land, which was

submerged in the sea. The concept of the lost land south of India

is linked with the literary history of the Tamil language. The crucial

question is whether the land referred to as Kumari was as large as a

continent. If the oral traditions and the subsequent writings exaggerated

the size and age of that landmass, what was the background of this exaggeration?

This paper traces the factors that had given rise to the myth of Kumari Kandam.

In the process it briefly touches upon the development of the European

concept of Lemuria that found its way into the Tamil literary tradition.

Lost Land and the Myth of Kumari Kandam Literary references to the lost land