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original thiruk kadal mallai located?

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elayavalli • June 2, 2002 


Sri:
SrimathE Ramanujaya Nama:

Dear gourp

please forgive me for posting temple related article on bhakti list,
did so mainly because of the wide distribution on this list compared
to the others.

Recently there was a discovery of a large submerged city off 
Mahabalipuram coast. For some reason, it did not get much 
attention in India and the local press there. Here are couple
of links that give more information about this discovery

http://www.india-atlantis.org/
http://www.grahamhancock.com/intro.php

The local tradition as well as our Sri vaishnava belief is that
the tiru kadal mallai was part of a total of 7 temples of which 
6 of them were submerged during a giant flooding event, leaving 
the shore temple that we see now as the only temple standing. After
some time the locals retrieved the moola vigraham from the original
submerged temple and installed it in a temple about 1 km from the
shore which is what we now worship as 'tiru kadal mallai'. I have 
looked at 2 books on 108 Divya Desam and they are consistent with 
this account. They also mention that thirumangai and boothath azhwar 
sang the praises of the original 'tiruk kadal mallai'. For example in
Periya thirumozhi 2.6.8, thirumangai azhwar says 

"Our lord with his discus resides along with the pingala lord Siva,
who frequents the cremation ground, in kadal mallai talasayanam 
where the celestials in hordes offer worship ... "

I am not sure if the presnt day tiruk kadal mallai has a Sivan 
temple in close proximity for azhwaar to refer to this place in 
such terms. 

Now coming back to the topic, there are some pretty startling 
information on this discovery

The National Inst of Oceanography of India has estimated the date 
of the flood (submerging 6 out of 7 temples) to be 1200 -1500 years
back. However, the British team that was part of the expedition 
has a different take:

"I had a chat with some of my colleagues here in the Dept. of 
Geological Sciences and it is probably reasonable to assume that 
there has been very little vertical tectonic motion in this region
[i.e. the coastal region around Mahabalipuram] during the past five 
thousand years or so. Therefore, the ominant process driving sea-
level change will have been due to the melting of the Late 
Pleistocene ice heets. Looking at predictions from a computer model 
of this process suggests that the area where the tructures exist 
would have been submerged around six thousand years ago. Of course, 
there is some ncertainty in the model predictions and so there is a 
flexibility of roughly plus or minus one thousand years is this date."

http://www.grahamhancock.com/underworld/underworld7.php

So, if we take the British view, then the the traditional dates for
azhwars becomes more credible. Sri A. Govindacharya in his book on 
Holy lives of Azhwars puts the date of Thirumangai azhwar about 2700 
B.C. It is possible that the date could be older by 1000 years. 
Difficult to confirm, but for sure, raises the question. 

Hope we will find an answer to what is beneath the see and how long
it has been submerged soon. 

adiyEn 
Venkatesh Elayavilli
http://www.srivaishnava.org




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