Kumari Kandam is the name of a legendary sunken landmass said to have been located to the south of present-day Kanyakumari District at the southern tip of India in the Indian Ocean. The legend assigns the continent and its final submergence an antiquity ranging in tens of thousands of years.
The Legend in Tamil Literature:There are scattered references in Sangam literature, such as Kalittokai 104, to how the sea took the land of the Pandiyan kings, upon which they conquered new lands to replace those they had lost.[5] There are also references to the rivers Pahruli and Kumari, that are said to have flowed in a now-submerged land.[6] The Silappadhikaram, a 5th century epic, stating that the "cruel sea" took the Pandiyan land that lay between the rivers Pahruli and the many-mountained banks of the Kumari, to replace which the Pandiyan king conquered lands belonging to the Chola and Chera kings (Maturaikkandam, verses 17-22). Adiyarkkunallar, a 12th century commentator on the epic, explains this reference by saying that there was once a land to the south of the present-day Kanyakumari , which stretched for 700 kavatams from the Pahruli river in the north to the Kumari river in the south.
This land was divided into 49 nadu, or territories, which he names as seven coconut territories (elutenga natu), seven Madurai territories (elumaturai natu), seven old sandy territories (elumunpalai natu), seven new sandy territories (elupinpalai natu), seven mountain territories (elukunra natu), seven eastern coastal territories (elukunakarai natu) and seven dwarf-palm territories (elukurumpanai natu). All these lands, he says, together with the many-mountained land that began with KumariKollam, with forests and habitations, were submerged by the sea.[6]. Two of these Nadus or territories were supposedly parts of present-day Kollam and Kanyakumari districts of Indian state Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively..
In Tamil national mysticism:
"Lemuria" in Tamil nationalist mysticist literature, connecting Madagascar, South India and Australia (covering most of the Indian Ocean). The distance from Madagascar to Australia is about 4,200 miles.
In modern Dravidian ethnic nationalist literature, Kumari Kandam or "Lemuria" (a name made up in the 19th century to account for discontinuities in biogeography) was the "cradle of civilization", the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular. These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by the Tanittamil Iyakkam, notably by self-taught Dravidologist Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.
R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamilnadu, in 1991 claimed to have deciphered the Indus script as Tamil, presenting the following timeline (cited after Mahadevan 2002):
ca. 200,000 to 50,000 BC: evolution of "the Tamilian or Homo Dravida",
ca. 200,000 to 100,000 BC: beginnings of the Tamil language
50,000 BC: Kumari Kandam civilisation
20,000 BC: A lost Tamil culture of the Easter Island which had an advanced civilisation
16,000 BC: Lemuria submerged
6087 BC: Second Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
3031 BC: A Chera prince in his wanderings in the Solomon Island saw wild sugarcane and started cultivation in Kumari Kandam.
1780 BC: The Third Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
7th century BC: Tolkappiyam (the earliest extant Tamil grammar)
The Legend in Tamil Literature:There are scattered references in Sangam literature, such as Kalittokai 104, to how the sea took the land of the Pandiyan kings, upon which they conquered new lands to replace those they had lost.[5] There are also references to the rivers Pahruli and Kumari, that are said to have flowed in a now-submerged land.[6] The Silappadhikaram, a 5th century epic, stating that the "cruel sea" took the Pandiyan land that lay between the rivers Pahruli and the many-mountained banks of the Kumari, to replace which the Pandiyan king conquered lands belonging to the Chola and Chera kings (Maturaikkandam, verses 17-22). Adiyarkkunallar, a 12th century commentator on the epic, explains this reference by saying that there was once a land to the south of the present-day Kanyakumari , which stretched for 700 kavatams from the Pahruli river in the north to the Kumari river in the south.
This land was divided into 49 nadu, or territories, which he names as seven coconut territories (elutenga natu), seven Madurai territories (elumaturai natu), seven old sandy territories (elumunpalai natu), seven new sandy territories (elupinpalai natu), seven mountain territories (elukunra natu), seven eastern coastal territories (elukunakarai natu) and seven dwarf-palm territories (elukurumpanai natu). All these lands, he says, together with the many-mountained land that began with KumariKollam, with forests and habitations, were submerged by the sea.[6]. Two of these Nadus or territories were supposedly parts of present-day Kollam and Kanyakumari districts of Indian state Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively..
In Tamil national mysticism:
"Lemuria" in Tamil nationalist mysticist literature, connecting Madagascar, South India and Australia (covering most of the Indian Ocean). The distance from Madagascar to Australia is about 4,200 miles.
In modern Dravidian ethnic nationalist literature, Kumari Kandam or "Lemuria" (a name made up in the 19th century to account for discontinuities in biogeography) was the "cradle of civilization", the origin of human languages in general and the Tamil language in particular. These ideas gained notability in Tamil academic literature over the first decades of the 20th century, and were popularized by the Tanittamil Iyakkam, notably by self-taught Dravidologist Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects.
R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamilnadu, in 1991 claimed to have deciphered the Indus script as Tamil, presenting the following timeline (cited after Mahadevan 2002):
ca. 200,000 to 50,000 BC: evolution of "the Tamilian or Homo Dravida",
ca. 200,000 to 100,000 BC: beginnings of the Tamil language
50,000 BC: Kumari Kandam civilisation
20,000 BC: A lost Tamil culture of the Easter Island which had an advanced civilisation
16,000 BC: Lemuria submerged
6087 BC: Second Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
3031 BC: A Chera prince in his wanderings in the Solomon Island saw wild sugarcane and started cultivation in Kumari Kandam.
1780 BC: The Third Tamil Sangam established by a Pandya king
7th century BC: Tolkappiyam (the earliest extant Tamil grammar)
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