let us move further to establish that Aryavartha included the Tamil lands too.
In other words,
were part of Aryavartha only.
To establish this,
we have to follow the trails of Sagara’s sons!
We have already seen that the 60,000 sons of Sagara, Rama’s ancestor
went about digging the earth in search of the Ashwamedha- horse.
We will recall the route they had taken.
They went eastward from the present day estuary of the
where they encountered the Directional Elephant of the east,
which was nothing but
the sub-terranian plate of the east (Vishwamithra explains thus)
This is true if we look at the map of tectonic plate movement.
The tectonic plate containing the countries
to the east of
The Sagaras turned Southward where too they encountered
the Directional Elephant of the south.
This Plate is described as Mahapadma by Vishwamithra.
"After splitting the eastern direction then they split opened the southern direction,
and even in southern direction they beheld an elephant
that is similar to a very great mountain,
and that is sustaining southerly side of earth on its head,
and on seeing that mammoth elephant of venerable character,
namely Mahapadma,
they went into an inordinate astonishment. [1-40-17, 18]”
This name Mahapadma brings in lot of memories
from the past history of
Usually this name is common among Nagas.
And Nagas were one of the 4 inhabitants of Srilanka in olden days.
Jaffna of Srilanka was known as NAgadweepa in those days.
The Sisunaga dynasty and Nandan dynasty
which are chronicled in Buddhists books of Srilanka
talk about them as Nagas.
It seems the Nagas of Srilanka had spread to
upto the
The Raj tarangini of
who was a Naga king
living in
He made a plea to the king to protect him from a Dravidian sorcerer,
who wanted to sell him for a price!!
(The past history of
and it needs an integrated and inter disciplinary approach
to put the pieces of information together
to build the exact past.)
There is a Mahapadma lake in
The interesting information about Mahapadma is that
it is one of the Nava nidhis of Kebera.
Another nidhi (riches) is Nila, the gem that is abundantly found in Srilanka
and mentioned so in Valmiki Ramayana too.
What is interesting about this information is that
Kubera was the brother of Ravana.
The Pushpak Vimana that Ravana used to abduct Sita was got by him from Kebera.
And as per Vishwamithra’s description of the southern elephant (tectonic plate),
Mahapadma indicates the plate carrying Srilanka.
From the information on tectonic plates,
we also come to know that countries, namely,
Srilanka, the southern part of Tamilnadu, Kerala and
belong to the same plate
which extends till Antartica!
When the Sagaras encountered Mahapadma,
it means they had dug on the west of present day Srilanka
and on realizing that it was the border of a tectonic plate,
they moved around Srilanka and kept digging at the border of the Tectonic plate.
That forms the southern border of Srilanka and a further push towards west –
this is the east of
landed them to encounter the Directional elephant of the west
and could not proceed further.
This defines the eastern border of the Pandyan kingdom
(which was described in a Purananuru verse) about 5000 years ago.
Then (according to Valmiki Ramayana) they started digging north ward.
It means they were digging around Srilanka in the area between
There in the North east, they spotted the Ashwamedha- horse!
This part is the tail connecting
which later came to be built as Sethu bridge or Sethu bund
by Sagaras’ descendant, Rama!
To probe more into this, let us look at the digital map of tectonic plates
released by the NASA.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates)
The bottom of the
This seems unique as no other location on sea bed around the world looks like this.
(Experts in ocean bed and tectonic theory may throw more light )
Read this link on the information on the sea floor of Bay of Bengal.
http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/2264/449/1/J_Indian_Geophys_Union_4_185.pdf
It is seen that the the sea floor is smooth and featureless.
The valley like formations are found and a channel like formation is found along the east coast of
India, encircling Srilanka.
From the plate tectonic information of the Bay of Bengal,
it is seen that the bottom of Bay of Bengal is part of Indian plate
which is pushing Burma plate. Nocobar islands are part of Burma plane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Bengal********************************
But before the Sagaras started off in their digging spree,
it is said by Vishwamithra that the ocean bed had a number of mountains.
The smoothness of the sea floor is found until the exit of the Bay,
stopping at the submerged hill ranges,
part of which were once in Ancient Pandyan
(kOdu as per Tamil nigandu means high structure)
It may be said that the massive silting brought by the
might have made the sea bed look featureless.
But the deposition by the rivers is found near the area of entry into sea.
Here the Bay is not deep.
Everywhere else, including the area around Srilanka ,
BARRING THE
The sea bed is featureless and uniformly deep.
This can be contrasted with other coastlines, say, in
where the land gradually runs into the sea.
The area at Sethu is the only elevated feature
which is under dispute now.
Taking cue from Valmiki Ramayana,
one inference can be that
the horse was spotted here
and so the digging stopped here,
leaving this patch connecting Srilanka untouched.
this place is the exact place where
the 60,000 sons of Sagara were burnt to ashes!
at the place where the Sagaras were burnt,
their ashes remained as a big mound!
To corroborate that this location in the eastern coast of
where Sethu or Rameshwaram or DhanushkoTi is situated,
is the last point on the trail of the Sagaras,
we have enough inputs from Valmiki Ramayana.
(to be continued)
