Stories and tales of lost lands, islands and civilizations have been with us for thousands of years. One of them is certainly the story of Atlantis, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, another is the legend of a continent in the Pacific Ocean, called Kaskara, Mu, Lemuria or Pacyfida.
In today’s post I would like to deal with the lesser-known mythical continent of Kumari Kandam.
Kumarikkandam (குமரிக்கண்டம் – Kumarikkaṇṭam – ˈkumʌriˌkʌɳɖʌm or “Kumari Kandam”), sometimes called Kumarinadu or “Kumari Nadu” (“Kemari Land”), is the name of a mythical-legendary continent that is said to have stretched south from India’s southernmost tip of Kanniyakumari (Kumari), encompassed parts of the present-day Indian Ocean, and is believed to have been the origin of Tamil culture – and indeed of the entire human species and civilization.
While the ancient existence of such a continent or subcontinent and its native primitive culture is denied by university studies of the earth and human history, its assumption finds supporters in the circles of esotericism, Hinduism and contemporary Tamil nationalism.
According to the modern, probably motivated by nationalist-nativist reinterpretation of the old Tamil tradition, the Dravidians originally come from Kumarikkandam, a continental landmass south of India in the Indian Ocean, which is shown in many depictions from the southern tip of India (including Sri Lanka) to Madagascar in the west and Australia in the east.
Geological speculations are set in the context of the far-reaching project of historical revisionism of the Sangams, colleges of ancient Tamil poets, first mentioned in early medieval commentarial literature (Iraiyanar Ahapporul, after K. Zvelebil ca. 650–750 CE) mentioned by the representatives of this project spatially on the submerged Kumarikkandam and temporally located in eras reaching back several millennia BC.
Epics such as Silappadigaram and Manimegalai mention a submerged city called “Puhar”. Puhar (also “Pumbuhar”) is located by the proponents of the Kumarikkandam theory on a lost continent, while modern antiquities locate this city on the coast of present-day Tanjavur district in Tamil Nadu and identify it with the also lost Kaveripattanam.
According to the modern legend of Lemuria-Kumarikkandam, which received a fantastic geographical and historical embellishment already in the early 20th century, it is said that on the continent of Kumari there were mountains, forests and even entire kingdoms, as well as two large rivers: “Pahruliyaru” and “Kumariyaru”.
In modern Tamil works (mainly non-fiction), Kumarikkandam is often identified with the continent of Lemuria (Tamil: “Ilemuriya”), postulated in 1858 by zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater.
In truth, it is impossible to determine how much of the Tamil accounts is true and how much is invented fable. Such accounts, difficult to verify, ignite discussions between fierce opponents and supporters of this theory.
However, it should be taken into account that before the end of the last glacial period, about 12 thousand years ago, the water level of the seas and oceans was much lower, and the melting of the frozen ice cap in the northern hemisphere could have led to an increase in the water level in all water bodies.
This process could have flooded the lands, islands and continents that were low-lying at that time, such as Atlantis, Kaskara or Kumari Kandam.
This is of course pure speculation, but we have no certainty that this did not happen.
The image of Kumari Kandam comes from Wikipedia, License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumari_Kandam
