Kumari Kandam
Kumari Kandam is a mythical continent, believed to be lost with an ancient Tamil civilization, supposedly located south of the Indian subcontinent in the Indian Ocean. Alternative names and spellings include Kumarikkandam and Kumari Nadu.
In the 19th century, some European and American scholars speculated the existence of a submerged continent called Lemuria to explain geological and other similarities between Africa, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Madagascar. A section of Tamil revivalists adapted this theory, connecting it to the Pandyan legends of lands lost to the ocean, as described in ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literature. According to these writers, an ancient Tamil civilisation existed on Lemuria, before it was lost to the sea in a catastrophe.
In the 20th century, the Tamil writers started using the name Kumari Kandam to describe this submerged continent. Although the Lemuria theory was later rendered obsolete by the continental drift theory, the concept remained popular among Tamil revivalists of the 20th century. According to them, Kumari Kandam was the place where the first two Tamil literary academies were organised during the Pandyan reign. They claimed Kumari Kandam as the cradle of civilisation to prove the antiquity of the Tamil language and culture.
Etymology and names
When the Tamil writers were introduced to the concept of Lemuria in the 1890s, they came up with the Tamilized versions of the continent's name. By the early 1900s, they started using Tamil names for the continent, to support their depiction of Lemuria as an ancient Tamil civilization. In 1903, V.G. Suryanarayana Sastri first used the term "Kumarinatu" in his work Tamil Mozhiyin Varalaru. The term Kumari Kandam was first used to describe Lemuria in the 1930s.The words "Kumari Kandam" first appear in Kanda Puranam, a 15th-century Tamil version of the Skanda Purana, written by Kachiappa Sivacharyara. Although the Tamil revivalists insist that it is a pure Tamil name, it is actually a derivative of the Sanskrit word "Kumārika Khaṇḍa". The Andakosappadalam section of Kanda Puranam describes the following cosmological model of the universe: There are many worlds, each having several continents, which in turn, have several kingdoms. Bharatan, the ruler of one such kingdom, had eight sons and one daughter. He further divided his kingdom into nine parts, and the part ruled by his daughter Kumari came to be known as Kumari Kandam after her. Kumari Kandam is described as the kingdom of the Earth. Although the Kumari Kandam theory became popular among anti-Brahmin, anti-Sanskrit Tamil nationalists, the Kanda Puranam actually describes Kumari Kandam as the land where the Brahmins reside, where Shiva is worshipped and where the Vedas are recited. The rest of the kingdoms are described as the territory of the mlecchas.
The 20th-century Tamil writers came up with various theories to explain the etymology of "Kumari Kandam" or "Kumari Nadu". One set of claims was centered on the purported gender egalitarianism in the prelapsarian Tamil homeland. For example, M. Arunachalam claimed that the land was ruled by female rulers. D. Savariroyan Pillai stated that the women of the land had the right to choose their husbands and owned all the property because of which the land came to be known as "Kumari Nadu". Yet another set of claims was centered on the Hindu goddess Kanya Kumari. Kandiah Pillai, in a book for children, fashioned a new history for the goddess, stating that the land was named after her. He claimed that the temple at Kanyakumari was established by those who survived the flood that submerged Kumari Kandam. According to cultural historian Sumathi Ramaswamy, the emphasis of the Tamil writers on the word "Kumari" symbolizes the purity of Tamil language and culture, before their contacts with the other ethnic groups such as the Indo-Aryans.
The Tamil writers also came up with several other names for the lost continent. In 1912, Somasundara Bharati first used the word "Tamilakam" to cover the concept of Lemuria, presenting it as the cradle of civilization, in his Tamil Classics and Tamilakam. Another name used was "Pandiya Nadu", after the Pandyas, regarded as the oldest of the Tamil dynasties. Some writers used "Navalan Tivu", the Tamil name of Jambudvipa, to describe the submerged land.
Submerged lands in ancient literature
Multiple ancient and medieval Tamil and Sanskrit works contain legendary accounts of lands in South India being lost to the ocean. The earliest explicit discussion of a katalkol of Pandyan land is found in a commentary on Iraiyanar Akapporul. This commentary, attributed to Nakkeerar, is dated to the later centuries of the 1st millennium CE. It mentions that the Pandyan kings, an early Tamil dynasty, established three literary academies : the first Sangam flourished for 4,400 years in a city called Tenmadurai attended by 549 poets and presided over by gods like Shiva, Kubera and Murugan. The second Sangam lasted for 3,700 years in a city called Kapatapuram, attended by 59 poets. The commentary states that both the cities were "seized by the ocean", resulting in loss of all the works created during the first two Sangams. The third Sangam was established in Uttara Madurai, where it is said to have lasted for 1,850 years.Nakkeerar's commentary does not mention the size of the territory lost to the sea. The size is first mentioned in a 15th-century commentary on Silappatikaram. The commentator Adiyarkunallar mentions that the lost land extended from Pahruli river in the north to the Kumari river in the South. It was located to the south of Kanyakumari, and covered an area of 700 kavatam. It was divided into 49 territories, classified in the following seven categories:
- Elu teñku natu
- Elu Maturai natu
- Elu munpalai natu
- Elu pinpalai natu
- Elu kunra natu
- Elu kunakarai natu
- Elu kurumpanai natu
There are also several other ancient accounts of non-Pandyan land lost to the sea. Many Tamil Hindu shrines have legendary accounts of surviving the floods mentioned in Hindu mythology. These include the prominent temples of Kanyakumari, Kanchipuram, Kumbakonam, Madurai, Sirkazhi and Tiruvottiyur. There are also legends of temples submerged under the sea, such as the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram, the remains of which were discovered after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.The Puranas place the beginning of the most popular Hindu flood myth – the legend of Manu – in South India. The Sanskrit-language Bhagavata Purana describes its protagonist Manu as the Lord of Dravida. The Matsya Purana also begins with Manu practicing tapas on Mount Malaya of South India. Manimeghalai mentions that the ancient Chola port city of Kaverippumpattinam was destroyed by a flood. It states that this flood was sent by the Hindu deity Indra, because the king forgot to celebrate a festival dedicated to him.
None of these ancient texts or their medieval commentaries use the name "Kumari Kandam" or "Kumari Nadu" for the land purportedly lost to the sea. They do not state that the land lost by the sea was a whole continent located to the south of Kanyakumari. Nor do they link the loss of this land to the history of Tamil people as a community.
Lemuria hypothesis in India
In 1864, the English zoologist Philip Sclater hypothesized the existence of a submerged land connection between India, Madagascar and continental Africa. He named this submerged land Lemuria, as the concept had its origins in his attempts to explain the presence of lemur-like primates on these three disconnected lands. Before the Lemuria hypothesis was rendered obsolete by the continental drift theory, a number of scholars supported and expanded it. The concept was introduced to the Indian readers in an 1873 physical geography textbook by Henry Francis Blanford. According to Blanford, the landmass had submerged due to volcanic activity during the Cretaceous period. In late 1870s, the Lemuria theory found its first proponents in the present-day Tamil Nadu, when the leaders of the Adyar-headquartered Theosophical Society wrote about it.Most European and American geologists dated Lemuria's disappearance to a period before the emergence of modern humans. Thus, according to them, Lemuria could not have hosted an ancient civilization. However, in 1885, the Indian Civil Service officer Charles D. Maclean published The Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, in which he theorized Lemuria as the proto-Dravidian urheimat. In a footnote in this work, he mentioned Ernst Haeckel's Asia hypothesis, which theorized that the humans originated in a land now submerged in the Indian Ocean. Maclean added that this submerged land was the homeland of the proto-Dravidians. He also suggested that the progenitors of the other races must have migrated from Lemuria to other places via South India. This theory was also cursorily discussed by other colonial officials like Edgar Thurston and Herbert Hope Risley, including in the census reports of 1891 and 1901. Later, Maclean's manual came to be cited as an authoritative work by the Tamil writers, who often wrongly referred to him as a "scientist" and a "Doctor".
The native Tamil intellectuals first started discussing the concept of a submerged Tamil homeland in the late 1890s. In 1898, J. Nallasami Pillai published an article in the philosophical-literary journal Siddhanta Deepika. He wrote about the theory of a lost continent in the Indian Ocean, mentioning that the Tamil legends speak of floods which destroyed the literary works produced during the ancient sangams. However, he also added that this theory had "no serious historical or scientific footing".