A significant discovery of a structure of boulders arranged in the form of a tortoise was found in an elevated region near a lake in a place called Vadamangalam near Sriperumbudur, near Chennai. The significance of this discovery is that it was dated at 1000 BCE.
(Coutesy: TOI)
The researchers are of the opinion that this could have been a memorial for the deceased "to honour the dead". But they could not find any human remains. In fact what they found was a 35 metres long and 20 metres wide structure in the shape of a tortoise. But what they explain for the shell part of the tortoise can have a different application.
They think that it was like a sarcophagus but also admit that the structure with its surrounding slabs look like a Vedic altar. They found another smaller structure like this inside which an earthen pot with a chisel was found. Some pots in this region had grains and one had some liquid. Their contention is that it was some primitive tribal people having the knowledge of astronomy. This shows that the researchers are under the influence of Western thought and Stonehenges and not tuned to Hindu practices that are continuing from an undated past.
I wish to bring to the notice of the readers and scholars that all these do offer proof for the continuing Vedic culture in this part of the country besides authenticating the information from the Tamil texts connected to this place.
First of all this is not a memorial. A tortoise is always associated with Kurma avatara and not burials. Kurma is one of the early avataras of Vishnu which is nothing but a symbolism for the way the earth is held stable. In the Kurma avatara Vishnu is seen as the basic support in the form of a giant tortoise upon which the mountain of Meru was churned. The churning is nothing but the rotation of the earth in its axis due to which the subterranean material is churned and expelled. When that happens on the land, earthquake occurs. So the worship of Kurma is intended to pray that the land on which we reside does not disturb us. This rationale still continues in Kathmandu, where one can find pillars erected on a base having the form of a tortoise. (pic below)
http://www.ecs.com.np/living_category.php?category=7&id=300
Our land of Bharat itself was thought to have been supported by Kurma. A separate chapter on Kurma chakra has been given by Varahamihira in Brihad samhita showing us that until 2000 years ago, the people held this belief and also showed it in their life where possible. The division of the land was as shown in the picture below.
The Saraswathy basin was considered as the shell region of the tortoise. The Vedics and descendants of Manu who were settled on the banks of the Saraswathy had held that Vishnu as Kurma was supporting them. That region is characterised as Madhya desa by Varahamihira. It also had Matsya desa, the land of early settlers (Manu) who were saved by Mathsya Vishnu as Fish), when their early habitat was flooded. For more details refer my old article at http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.in/2012/02/who-is-dravida-mr-karunanidhi.html
Any spread of Kurma principle as the support base must have originated from this Madhya Desa where Saraswathy flowed once. This background information is needed to understand the Kurma or tortoise formation found in Vada Mangalam near Chennai. Because wherever the Saraswathy people had spread, there they have made their presence shown by the tortoise base. For example the Deepa-sthambha in many temples in the west coast region of South India where saraswathy Brahmins were settled have tortoise as the base. In other words, the deepa sthambha which signifies 'light' was built on an altar that was supported by Kurma. This fulfils the basic principle of the Kurma chakra that Kurma supports the land and gives light of hope for survival to the people.
As far as I know, tracing from Kollur, this tortoise base is seen down the South. The Kollur Mookambika temple is dedicated to Durga or the trinity of the Devis. But that it has a deepa sthamba supported by Vishnu Kurma is indicative of a belief system of the Saraswathy region that Kurma supports life.
The pillar on the right side of the above picture is the Deepa-sthamba (pillar of light) at Kollur, that is supported by Kurma. Pillars like this have a regular pattern with elephant situated on top. The elephant can be seen in the picture. The elephant might signify the Dik Gajas – Directional elephants.
Similar pillar with Kurma- base can be seen in front of Udupi Krishna. Yet another pillar I know of is found in Vadakku Nathan temple in Kerala.
The above pillar from Kerala gives an idea about how the central structure had been made. A similar structure, though bigger in size had a central box like cavity held in place by stuffing the surrounding gaps. A central structure or a pillar or a mantap must have been constructed on that. Another look at the excavated site shows how central structures could have been made like above.
To get a better idea of the central box like basement inside the shell, let us take a look from a top angle of the Kollur Kurma base.
The concept of Kurma as base for pillars of light or pillars that support houses has spread to other parts of the world even as early as the 14th century. A Buddhist temple in Korea has a similar feature that was built in 14-15 the century CE.
http://san-shin.net/Doseon-guksa.html
A similar kind of Kurma base for a pillar was installed in the year 1716 in Vietnam. (pic below)
The same concept was used in a temple in Spain which is not yet completed.
http://myitchyfingers.wordpress.com/2011/09/
The concept in all these is the same – as support base for a super structure. This idea must have travelled from India to other places - from Hindu thought to other systems of belief. Such being the continuing Thought on Kurma, one must not rush to a conclusion that the excavated Kurma in Vada Mangalam was a memorial for the dead!
Now let me come to the other major features tracing the identity of the people who had lived in the region of the excavated site. The excavated site was not an area peopled by primitive nature but an advanced culture even as early as 3500 BP. Before explaining that, let me go step by step.
First of all, the name of the place tells a background. This place is called Vadamangalam, meaning Northern Mangalam. (Sounds similar to Vadakkunathan of Kerala!!).
Mangalam was a common name for settlements of Brahmins of four Vedas. There were many Chathurvedi – Mangalams created by kings where a temple was established around which Brahmins well versed in four Vedas were settled. It also had a well planned settlement of all the other sections of the society. A town by name Vada Mangalam shows that there was a Then-Mangalam – Southern Mangalam also in the vicinity. And this Vada mangalam could in all probability be a Chathurvedi Mangalam. The famous and old Vishnu temples in and around this region shows a possibility of Vadamangalam being a Chathurvedi Mangalam.
The discovery of this structure near a pond goes well with the name Mangalam. A pond or a tank is a usual feature near a temple. The so-called 'memorials' had pots with grains and liquid below the region. This goes well with Vastu worship before starting the construction. Even now most of the houses in Tamilnadu are constructed with Vastu puja which requires the positioning of pots and vessels filled with grains, gems and other things in the pit where the basement structure has to be made. For temples, the buried items are many and elaborate. A Kurma feature suggests that a temple had existed there and the Kurma could have formed the basis for a super structure such as a pillar.
The central box structure resembling a Vedic altar confirms that this was indeed a feature associated with a temple. The chisel found in a pot buried under the tortoise takes us to the next level of understanding which takes us to a period before 1900 years.
A discernible history for this site dates back to 1900 years BP when the Cholan king Karikalan worshiped at Saththan temple in Kancheepuram, then known as Kacchi and got a weapon called "Chendu" from that deity. He went to the Himalayas after that and used this weapon to chisel the image of Tiger, the Cholan emblem on the Himalayas. This weapon that was used for chiselling the mountain rock perhaps signifies the early period when stone cutting and stone-working was happening in Tamil lands. The absence of stone inscriptions and stone based temples prior to 2000 years BP can be attributed to the yet-to-develop art of stone cutting.
The Tamil lands as at the time of Silappdhikaram (1800 years BP) did not have natives experienced in stone works and metal works. The description of Indra festival at Pumpukaar shows that there existed 2 divisions of the city with one situated near the coast and another a little inward. The coastal division was called as "Maru vur paakkam" giving the meaning that it was the region for the people of Maru vur (other places). The other division was called as Pattina-p paakkam (township) which describes the activities of the natives and the location of Indra festival. The Maru Vur paakkam was described as having foreigners, traders from outside and many artisans including those who worked on stones and metals.
This shows that stone workers were not native to Tamil lands of that time. Corroboratory information can be quoted of stone workers and gold smiths having been given some rights in the Kongu region. The rights included the right to wear slippers, construct two storeys for their houses, to paint their houses and to decorate the front part of their house with flowers. This information is used by Dravidian chauvinists saying that the earlier denial of right was a suppression of their castes. But a reading of their status as migrated people shows that they were granted many rights by the kings treating them as natives in course of time.
The information that I want to highlight is that stone cutting was new to Tamil lands. The fact that Karikalan had taken a cutting weapon from Kanchipuram shows that such weapons were available in Kanchipuram or that stone cutters were settled in that region only which was called as Thondai mandalam. Since the stone cutters were not natives of Tamil lands, it gives the opinion that people who occupied Kanchipuram and Thondai nadu about 2000 years ago were migrated people who had knowledge of cutting or chiselling stones. Of all the things that are usually found in pots excavated in many sites in India, the discovery of Chisel in a pot in a region known for cutting stones proves the story of Karikalan getting a chisel from Kanchipuram.
This region of Thondai mandalam was not a Tamil region but came under the control of Karikal Chola by driving out the then existing people called Kurumbar, according to the Wiki pedia article. I have not yet personally come across such an information in my searches, but am of the opinion that one section of the people brought from Dwaraka by sage Agasthya to Tamil lands about 3500 years ago were settled in this region. One reason for my reasoning is that this place Kanchipuram was known as 'Kacchi" and not Kanchi in early write-ups. Kacchi sounds close to "Kaccha Mandala" which was the name that Katch in Gujarat was known in olden times. This name is found mentioned in Skanda Purana. There is every chance for Kanchipuram to be called as Kacchi, if the people from Kaccha Mandala had settled there for the first time.
The Aruvalars were the artisan class that Agasthya brought from Dwaraka. There was a Aruva naadu on the west coast region near the starting point of river Kaveri. A mention of this is found in Puranauru, a sangam age text. There is a place called Aralvaay mozhi which was earlier known as Aruva mozhi in the Kanya kumari district. These are settlements of migrated labour. Inscriptions to the effect that they were given rights like natives are found in Aralvaay mozhi. Similarly Aruvalar people had settled in Kanchipuram and this happened as 3500 years ago as per evidence from literary works in Tamil.
The excavated ones dated at 3000 years ago confirm the existence of these people at that time. They were not primitives, but artisans who once had very good times in the Katch region when Indus culture was flourishing there. The term Aruvalar has the word Aruval, which means 'sickle'. Perhaps these people were engaged in cutting works using iron weapons. Their origin from Dwaraka goes well with Kurma structures also. The Kurma structure also goes well with these people, because they were also known as Kurumba or Kuruma
http://www.kurumans.com/history.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurumbar
Kuruma seems to be a corruption of Kurma in the light of excavation of Kurma structure there. These people originally from the Kutch region must have had their previous origins in Saraswathy culture with the worship of Kurma. That this region had connection to the saraswathy region people or the Velirs and others of Dwaraka is confirmed by another fact that Athondai who established his kingdom in this region called back the displaced Velirs. With them Vishnu cult, stone works (by building temples) and Vedic teaching and learning picked up in Kancheepuram by gaining fame as "Nagareshu Kanchi".The first appearance of stone temples in these regions (Pallava period) also confirm the presence of these people in this region.
To put in a nutshell, the excavation of Kurma structure confirms the settlements of Aruvalar or Kurumbar as early as 3000 years ago. They were the migrants from Dwaraka region – a mixture of artisans- who once had a good time in Indus economy. But with the submergence of Bet Dwaraka about 3500 years ago which saw a downfall of the Indus culture –which Max muller and others described as a handiwork of invading Aryans – these people had migrated to the region which later came to be called as Thondai nadu. Their core region of settlement was Kacchi. Like any migrant who would relive old memories, they have named it after Kaccha mandala from where they came. Their life and works were around stone works and perhaps cattle rearing also.
They were driven out of this region during the reign of Karikal Cholan about 1900 years ago. From then onwards their life ran into struggle as they must have faced discrimination from the natives wherever they settled.
Later on, this excavated region could have been made a Chathur Vedi Mangalam from whence the present name Vada Mangalam could have come into use. So in my opinion, further excavation near the site could throw more light on the stone cutting Aruvalar people. The presence of Chisel in a pot is indicative of their traditional job and offers the reason for why Karikala went there for getting a weapon to chisel his emblem on the rock of Himalayas. Some fine instruments for cutting stones must have been possessed by the people of Kacchi then, from whom Karikalan had got the 'Chendu'. What we are seeing in the rocks of the Kurma is a work on stone by these people.
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From
Vedic-era rock memorials found near city
D Madhavan TNN
Sriperumbudur: For thousands of years, history remained buried under boulders near a lake in Sriperumbudur. That changed recently when a team of archaeologists excavated the site after finding signs of human activity including marks that appeared to have been made by stone tools.
The archaeologists discovered that the boulders were a chain of animal-shaped memorials from the early Iron Age, dating back to around 1,000 BC. On Saturday, a team of experts from the Archaeological Survey of India visited the site and took samples as evidence .
The discovery was made on an elevated part of a lake in Vadamangalam near Sriperumbudur. The biggest of the memorials is a tortoise-shaped monument around 35 metres long and 20 metres wide.
The archaeologists also found several other memorials in animal forms and unearthed buried pots a few hundred metres from the tortoise-shaped monument. One of the buried pots contained a part of a corroded cleaver, a chisel and three smaller pots containing grains and another pot with some liquid. Pot burials, the archaeologists said, are common across ancient cultures that believed in life after death. The objects are placed with the body so the person could use them in the "next world".
"The presence of iron tools was not unexpected because last year we discovered a large iron smelting unit at Balanallur, some 4 km from here. What excited us were the animal shaped memorials," said geoarchaeologist S Rama Krishna Pisipaty. Archaeologists said the findings are the first evidence of animal-shaped memorials dating back to Iron Age in the country. Memorials from this period discovered earlier were human-shaped or stone circles. Most of the memorials are tortoise and reptile-shaped, exhibiting the influence of later Vedic period. The later Vedic period was succeeded by Early Iron Age.
The memorials could also have been built for the leader of a tribe, the archaeologists said.
As the area has been extensively used by the sand mining industry, the ASI last week erected a board declaring the site as a monument of national importance under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958 and 2010.
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From
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/the-turtle-that-survived-the-sand-miners/238304-60.html
South India | Updated Mar 13, 2012 at 11:54am IST
The turtle that survived the sand miners
At first glance, it is difficult to believe that the heap of weathered and uneven stones can be likened to a turtle, whichever way you look at it. "The aerial view will do it full justice," smiles Dr Rama Krishna Pisipaty understandingly. "Try imagining how the head and tail of a turtle look and then look at it again," he urges. Slowly, the idea sinks in and the heap does begin to look like a huge, reptilian turtle.
When Dr Pisipaty first got to this hill two years ago, on the banks of the Vadamangalam village lake, it was a mass of overgrown weeds and weathered rocks. "ASI had listed it as a potential heritage site in the late 60s but the locals and miners hadn't really treated it with any regard till last month,'" he laments. The evidence points to the Early Iron Age, which dates back almost 3,000 years.
With a team of research scholars from SCSVMV University, where Pisipaty is a professor and geoarchaeologist, he began the dig on February 15 after scouring the area and marking likely spots. "We couldn't use crowbars and shovels because the professor said that it could damage the findings inside," reveals Paneerselvam, a villager who assisted with the excavation. "After we removed the layer of red soil on top, we used small picks and hand brushed the rest out carefully. It was a lot of work," he sighs, but pride prevails.
It paid off - this is the first time in recorded history that a memorial formation shaped like a turtle has been documented, he says. The biggest finding of the five Cairn memorials (rock formation arranged without cement) is obviously the 24-metre long turtle memorial, whose shell is made up of 21 boulders stacked together.
"Inside the shell, we found a earthen sarcophagus surrounded with four haematite stones - almost like a Vedic fire altar. Around this there were flat, cut Cudappah stones laid like a platform on the bedrock," he relates. As there were no human remains found, this must have been more of a memorial than a tomb, he surmises. "In fact no human remains have been found in any of the excavated sites, which makes us believe that this must have been some memorial-ground for the deceased. Rather intriguingly, both the haematite and Cudappah stones are not native to the region. This led Pisipaty to believe that they were brought from a distance to "honour the dead" and shaped with Iron Age chisels and tools.
Evidence was found in a smaller memorial, where a chisel and some jars were unearthed. Offering bowls and sarcophagi have been shifted to the University while the stone formations alone remain. This tied in nicely with a metal workshop that he excavated in nearby Palnellur, some years ago. "This was clearly a learned civilization that had knowledge of astronomy and primitive sciences, despite looking and living like some tribal clan," he figures. All the tombs have been aligned along the North-West axis and are believed to have astronomical significance, he adds.
Walking around, there are some deep pits that look like ravines. He shrugs it off with a grimace, "There have been people mining even here for sand and stone. Almost 70 per cent of this site has been destroyed thanks to this, but there is still plenty left," he brightens up.
What if it rains? "The ASI will have to protect this turtle and the other structures, now that they are exposed to the elements," he states wistfully. "There is lots of studying to be done to date the era and understand the culture, but most of it had broken and decomposed," he says ruefully.
But this will just serve as a push for more excavation to see what else Vadamangalam holds for the diminutive archaeologist.
