Tamil Civilisation and the Lost

Land of Lemuria/Kumari Kandam

written by S Rammohan
March 26, 2021

Lemuria came to be identified as Kumari Kandam, the ancestral

homeland of the Tamils, lost to the ravaging ocean in the distant past,
due to what is called “Kadal Kol” in Tamil.

The concept of the lost land of Lemuria hitherto a talking point in the west finds a
new focus and interest in the study of the origins of Tamil Civilisation at the
beginning of the 20th century. This was a direct result of the new consciousness
of the ethnic and linguistic identity that emerged in Tamil speaking regions of
South India. By the Tamil enthuse Lemuria came to be recast as the birthplace of

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the Tamil civilization. It came to be identified as Kumari Kandam, the ancestral
homeland of the Tamils, lost to the ravaging ocean in the distant past, due to what
is called “Kadal Kol” in Tamil.

Tamil Nadu Government, during January 1981 at the Fifth International

Conference of Tamil Studies held in Madurai, screened a documentary named
“Kumari Kandam” both in Tamil and English. The documentary, produced with
the financial support of the Tamil Nadu Government, traced the roots of Tamil,
its literature and culture, to the very beginning of time in Lemuria otherwise
known as Kumari Kandam in Tamil. In this documentary, the Paleo history of the
world is anchored around Tamil land and language. Thus Sclater’s[1] lost land of
Lemuria was re-established in the timeless collective consciousness as a
catastrophic loss of prelapsarian Tamil past. Even earlier to this, in 1879
Geological Survey of India brought out in the manual of GRGl, a discussion on the
Mesozoic land bridge between Southern India and Africa. Dr.D.N. Wadia, a famed
Professor of Geology, mentioned in 1990 “The evidence from which the above
conclusion regarding an Indo-African land connection is drawn, is so strong and
so many-sided that the differences of opinion that exist among geologists
appertain to the main conclusion being accepted as one of the settled facts in the
geography of this part of the world.[2]

E.M. Forster in his famed novel ” A Passage to India “ (1984) begins his stunning
stanza line “The Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu through, Siva’s
hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further than religion, knows of a
time when neither the river nor the Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an
ocean flowed over the holy places of Hindustan. The mountains rose, their debris
silted up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the river, and
the India we call immemorial came into being. But India is far older than anything
in the world”.[3]

In the ethnology chapter of the Manual, Maclean brought the findings

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 of Ernest Haeckel about Lemuria as a primeval home of man. Maclean
also draws a further conclusion from the German Biologist’s theory of
the origin of various traces of mankind on the submerged Lemuria
continent and reiterated that it was the primaeval home of the
ancestors of India and Ceylon.

Thus the fabled Kumari Kandam, which was based on Tamil Literary tradition, so
far can receive immediate credibility through western studies. The foundation for
this claim was laid by Charles D. Maclean Book “The Manual of the
Administration of the Madras Presidency” published in 1835” Mr Maclean was an
Officer of Indian Civil Services. In the ethnology chapter of the Manual, Maclean
brought the findings of Ernest Haeckel about Lemuria as a primeval home of man.
Maclean also draws a further conclusion from the German Biologist’s theory of
the origin of various traces of mankind on the submerged Lemuria continent and
reiterated that it was the primaeval home of the ancestors of India and Ceylon.[4]
He suggested that Southern India was once the passage ground by which the
ancient progenitors of northern and Mediterranean races proceeded to the parts
of the globe which they now inhabit from Lemuria.[5]

However, there is a distinct difference in perception of the Lemuria inhabitants

from the point of view of Western Scholars and the Tamil enthuse. According to
Western Scholars, the primitive inhabitants of Lemuria are barely human and do
not represent the trace of civilization. However, the Tamil scholars hold Lemuria
or Kumari Kantam as the birthplace of the Tamil Language and cradle of Tamil
Civilisation. The antiquity of the Tamil language got a boost with the publication
of Campbell’s Book “The competitive grammar of Dravidian Langauge”. J. Nellai
swami Pillai wrote in the journal “The Light of Truth” or “Siddantha Deepika” that
if you can believe in the tradition of there having been a vast continent south of
Cape Comorin, all humanity and civilization flowed east and west and north, then
there can be nothing strange in our regarding the Tamilians as the remnants of a

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pre-diluvian race. Even the existing works in Tamil speak of three separate floods
which completely swamped the extreme southern shores and carried off with
them all its literary treasures of ages.[6]

Nella Swami Pillai gives a cautious conclusion that his theory stands on no serious
historical or scientific evidence. The same was enthusiastically taken up fully by a
well-known Tamil scholar Maraimalai Adigal.

Though the name Lemuria came into the Tamil world only in 1903, it started
gaining significance among the Tamil populous. Shri V.G.Suryanarayana Sastri
started using the name Kumarinadu in his book “Tamilmoliyin varalaru. Thiru
T.V.Kalyanasundaram the famous Congress Nationlist, and a noted Tamil scholar
wrote emphatically that the Lemuria of “Western Scholars” like Ernst Haeckel
and Scott Elliot was none other than the Kumarinadu of Tamil literature”.[7]

The very name Kumari is suggestive of the pristine chastity and everlasting youth
of the Tamil land. Later the legends linked the Devi Temple at Kanyakumari to
Kumari Kantam or Kumar Nadu. The Kumari Kantam as mentioned in the old
Tamil classics, has no reference to the Mesozoic continent of the Indian ocean.
There is no reference to the old boundaries of Asiatic tablelands. The Tamil
literature speaks of them as the original inhabitants of the great territory opened
by two seas on the East and West, by Venkata hills and submerged rivers Pakruli
and Kumari on the South.[8] Scholars like Somasundara Bharathi and others also
invented hackers’ concept of Lemuria being the cradle of mankind, which implies
that the ancient Tamil region is the birthplace of human beings and the Tamils
were the first humans.

Kumari Kantam was having a breadth of 700 kavatam south of Cape

Cameron containing 49 principalities, 2 rivers called Pakruli and
Kumari flowed there and it also had a hill called Kumari Koodu. The
major cities in Kumari Kantam were Thenmadurai and Kapatapuram.

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The features of Kumari Kantam were referred to by Adiyarku Nallar, the
commenter of Silapathikaram. Kumari Kantam was having a breadth of 700
kavatam south of Cape Cameron containing 49 principalities, 2 rivers called
Pakruli and Kumari flowed there and it also had a hill called Kumari Koodu. The
major cities in Kumari Kantam were Thenmadurai and Kapatapuram. This is also
referred to in Tholkappia Orrai of Ilam Pooranar Nachinarkku Iniyan Perasiriyar.

The Tamil Scholars, V.G. Suryanaryana Sastri and Abraham Pandithar lament the
loss of works such as Mudunarai, Mudukurugu, etc, which had been swallowed by
the ocean. These are derived from the fact that several poems in the Sangam
anthology of later age refer to oceanic threat and consequent loss of lands and
lives.

The Tamil Scholar K.Anna Poorni delineates the extent of Kumari Kantam as she
concludes in Tamilagham “ Today, the Tamilnadu that we inhabit consists of 12
districts within its limits. A few centuries ago. Cranach and a part of the Telugu
land were part of Tamilnadu. Some thousands of years ago, the northern limit of
Tamilnadu extended to the Vindhya mountain and the southern limit extended
700 Kavatam to the south of Cape Kumari which included regions such as
Panainatu, mountains such as Kumari Kotu and Mani Malai, cities such as Muttur
and Kapatapuram and rivers such as Pahruli. All these were seized by the ocean,
so say scholars. That today’s the Indian Ocean was once upon a time a vast
landmass and that that is where the man first appears has been stated by several
scholars such as Ernst Haeckel and Scott Elliot in their books, History of Creation
and Lost Lemuria. The landmass called Lemuria is what Tamilians call
Kumarinadu. That which is remaining after this ancient landmass was seized by
the ocean is the Tamil Motherland in which we reside today with pride.

References

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[1] Philip Lutley Sclater was a zoologist and naturalist who studied extensively the
presence of fauna and other species in different regions. He found that more than
30 species of Lemur monkeys inhabited Madagascar while they were hardly to be
found in Africa but were seen in lesser number of species in India. Explaining the
anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar, Sclater propounded that the
Lemurs must have inhabited a lost continent in the Indian Ocean. Termed
‘Lemuria, this continent must have extended across the Indian Ocean and the
Indian Peninsula to the further side of the Bay of Bengal and over the great
islands of the Indian Archipelago. David Bressan, ‘A Geologists’ Dream: The lost
continent of Lemuria’ in www.blogs.thescientificamerican.com

[2] Wadia D.N. 1919, Geology of India for students, London: Macmillan – 1939,
Geology of India, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.

[3] E.M.Forster, “A passage to India”: Harcourt Brace, New York 1984, pp

135-136.

[4] Maclean Charles. D. “The Manual of the Administration of the Madras

Presidency”, Vol.I, Asian Educational Publication, pp-33-43.

[5] Ibid 111.

[6] Nella Swami Pillai. J, “Ancient Tamil Civilisation in the light of truth” or
Siddhanta Deepika. No. 5, pp 109-113.

[7] T.V.Kalyanasundaram, “Indiyavum viduthalaiyum”, Charu Printing Press,

Madras, P 106.

[8] Sesha Iyengar K.G. Chera King of the Sangam Period, 1937, pp 658.

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