Mysterious Kumari Kandam The Lost Hindu Continent - బయటపడ్డ కుమారి ఖండం అసలు చరిత్ర - With Subtitles
Kumari Kandam refers to a mythical lost continent with an ancient Tamil civilization, located south of present-day India, in the Indian Ocean. Alternative name and spellings include Kumarikkantam and Kumari Nadu.
In the 19th century, a section of the European and American scholars speculated the existence of a submerged continent called Lemuria, to explain geological and other similarities between Africa, India and Madagascar. A section of Tamil revivalists adapted this theory, connecting it to the Pandyan legends of lands lost to the ocean, as described in ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literature. According to these writers, an ancient Tamil civilization existed on Lemuria, before it was lost to the sea in a catastrophe. In the 20th century, the Tamil writers started using the name "Kumari Kandam" to describe this submerged continent. Although the Lemuria theory was later rendered obsolete by the continental drift (plate tectonics) theory, the concept remained popular among the Tamil revivalists of the 20th century. According to them, Kumari Kandam was the place where the first two Tamil literary academies (sangams) were organized during the Pandyan reign. They claimed Kumari Kandam as the cradle of civilization to prove the antiquity of Tamil language and culture.
The words "Kumari Kandam" first appear in Kanda Puranam, a 15th-century Tamil version of the Skanda Purana, written by Kachiappa Sivacharyara (1350-1420). Although the Tamil revivalists insist that it is a pure Tamil name, it is actually a derivative of the Sanskrit word "Kumārika Khaṇḍa". The Andakosappadalam section of Kanda Puranam describes the following cosmological model of the universe: There are many worlds, each having several continents, which in turn, have several kingdoms. Paratan, the ruler of one such kingdom, had eight sons and one daughter. He further divided his kingdom into nine parts, and the part ruled by his daughter Kumari came to be known as Kumari Kandam after her. Kumari Kandam is described as the kingdom of the Earth. Although the Kumari Kandam theory became popular among anti-Brahmin anti-Sanskrit Tamil nationalists, the Kanda Puranam actually describes Kumari Kandam as the land where the Brahmins also reside, where Shiva is worshipped and where the Vedas are recited. The rest of the kingdoms are described as the territory of the mlecchas.
The medieval commentator Adiyarkunallar stated that the size of the land south of Kanyakumari, lost to the sea was 700 kavatam. The modern equivalent of kavatam is not known. In 1905, Arasan Shanmugham Pillai wrote that this land amounted to thousands of miles. According to Purnalingam Pillai and Suryanarayana Sastri, the number was equivalent to 7000 miles. Others, such as Abraham Pandither, Aiyan Aarithan, Devaneyan and Raghava Aiyangar offered estimates ranging from 1,400 to 3,000 miles. According to U. V. Swaminatha Iyer, only the land amounting in area to only a few villages (equivalent to the Tamil measure of two kurram) was lost. In 1903, Suryanarayana Sastri suggested that Kumari Kandam extended from the present-day Kanyakumari in North to Kerguelen Islands in South, and from Madagascar in the West to Sunda Islands in the East. In 1912, Somasundara Bharati wrote that the continent touched China, Africa, Australia and Kanyakumari on four sides. In 1948, Maraimalai Adigal stated that the continent stretched as far as the South Pole. Somasundara Bharati offered an estimate of 6000–7000 miles.
The first map to visualize Lemuria as an ancient Tamil territory was published by S. Subramania Sastri in 1916, in the journal Centamil. This map was actually part of an article that criticized the pseudohistorical claims about a lost continent. Sastri insisted that the lost land mentioned in Adiyarkunallar's records was barely equivalent to a taluka (not larger than a few hundred square miles). The map depicted two different versions of Kumari Kandam: that of Sastri, and that of A. Shanmugam Pillai (see above). The lost land was depicted as a peninsula, similar to the present-day Indian peninsula.
In 1927, Purnalingam Pillai published a map titled "Puranic India before the Deluges", in which he labeled the various places of Kumari Kandam with names drawn from ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literary works. Pulavar Kulanthai, in his 1946 map, was first to depict cities like Tenmaturai and Kapatapuram on the maps of Kumari Kandam. Several maps also depicted the various mountain ranges and rivers of Kumari Kandam. The most elaborate cartographic visualization appeared in a 1977 map by R. Mathivanan. This map showed the 49 nadus mentioned by Adiyarkunallar, and appears in the Tamil Nadu government's 1981 documentary.
A 1981 map published by N. Mahalingam depicted the lost land as "Submerged Tamil Nadu" in 30,000 B.C. A 1991 map, created by R. Mathivanan, showed a land bridge connecting Indian peninsula to Antarctica. A few Tamil writers also depicted Gondwanaland as Kumari Kandam.
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