Kumari
Kandam or Lemuria (Tamil:குமரிக்கண்டம்) is the name of a supposed sunken
landmass referred to in existing ancient Tamil literature. It is said
to have been located in the Indian Ocean, to the south of
present-day Kanyakumari district at the southern tip of India.
References in Tamil literature
There are scattered
references in Sangam literature, such as Kalittokai 104, to how
the sea took the land of the Pandiyan kings, upon which they
conquered new lands to replace those they had lost. There are also
references to the rivers Pahruli and Kumari, that are said to have flowed in a
now-submerged land. The Silappadhikaram, a 5th century epic, states
that the “cruel sea” took the Pandiyan land that lay between the rivers Pahruli
and the mountainous banks of the Kumari, to replace which the Pandiyan king
conquered lands belonging to the Chola and Chera kings (Maturaikkandam, verses
17-22). Adiyarkkunallar, a 12th century commentator on the epic, explains this
reference by saying that there was once a land to the south of the
present-day Kanyakumari, which stretched for 700 kavatam from
the Pahruli river in the north to the Kumari river in the south. As the modern
equivalent of a kavatam is unknown, estimates of the size of the lost land vary
from 1,400 miles (2,300 km) to 7,000 miles (11,000 km) in length, to
others suggesting a total area of 6-7,000 square
miles, or smaller still an area of just a few villages.
This land was divided
into 49 nadu, or territories, which he names as seven coconut territories (elutenga natu), seven Madurai territories (elumaturai natu), seven old sandy territories (elumunpalai natu), seven new sandy territories (elupinpalai natu), seven mountain territories (elukunra natu), seven eastern coastal territories (elukunakarai natu) and seven dwarf-palm territories (elukurumpanai natu). All these lands, he says, together with the
many-mountained land that began with KumariKollam, with forests and
habitations, were submerged by the sea.Two of these Nadus or territories were
supposedly parts of present-day Kollam and Kanyakumari districts.
None of these texts name
the land “Kumari Kandam” or “Kumarinadu”, as is common today. The only similar
pre-modern reference is to a “Kumari Kandam” (written குமரிகண்டம்,
rather than குமரிக்கண்டம்
as the land is called in modern Tamil), which is named in
the medieval Tamil text Kantapuranam either
as being one of the nine continents, or one of the nine divisions of India
and the only region not to be inhabited by barbarians. 19th and 20th Tamil
revivalist movements, however, came to apply the name to the territories
described in Adiyarkkunallar’s commentary to the Silappadhikaram. They
also associated this territory with the references in the Tamil Sangams,
and said that the fabled cities of southern Madurai and Kapatapuram where the
first two Sangams were said to be held were located on Kumari Kandam.
In Tamil national mysticism
In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, Tamil nationalists came to identify Kumari Kandam
with Lemuria, a hypothetical “lost continent” posited in the 19th century
to account for discontinuities in biogeography. In these accounts, Kumari
Kandam became 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 DravidologistDevaneya 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 Tamil Nadu, in 1991
claimed to have deciphered the still undeciphered 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 king
3031 BC: A Chera prince in his wanderings
in the Solomon Island saw wild sugarcane and started cultivation in Kumari
Kandam.
1780 BC: The Third Tamil Sangam established
by a Pandya king
7th century BC: Tolkappiyam (the
earliest known 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).
Mathivanan’s theories are not considered
mainstream by the contemporary university academy internationally.
Popular culture
§
Kumari Kandam appeared in the The Secret Saturdays episodes “The King of Kumari Kandam” and “The Atlas
Pin.” This version is a city on the back of a giant sea serpent with its
inhabitants all fish people.
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