The Lost Land of Lemuria A BOOK The Philip E. Lilienthal imprint honors special books in commemoration of a man whose work at the University of California Press from 1954 to 1979 was marked by dedication to young authors and to high standards in the field of Asian Studies. Friends, family, authors, and foundations have together endowed the Lilienthal Fund, which enables the Press to publish under this imprint selected books in a way that reflects the taste and judgment of a great and beloved editor. The Lost Land of Lemuria Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories Sumathi Ramaswamy UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2004 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ramaswamy, Sumathi. The lost land of Lemuria : fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories / Sumathi Ramaswamy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-24032-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-520-24440-0 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Lost continents. 2. Tamil (Indic people). 3. Tamil (Indic people)—India—History. 4. Civilization, Ancient. 5. Lemuria. 6. Tamil Nadu (India)—Civilization. I. Title. GN751.R26 2004 001.94—dc22 2003022825 Manufactured in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 10987654321 The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). For my father, in the shadow of whose loss I wrote this book A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism CONTENTS List of Illustrations / xi Acknowledgments / xiii Note on Transliteration / xvii 1. Placing Loss / 1 2. Science in the Service of Loss / 19 3. Occult Losses / 53 4. Living Loss at Land’s End / 97 5. Flooding History / 137 6. Mapping Loss / 182 7. Laboring against Loss / 223 Notes / 235 Bibliography / 297 Index / 325 ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Melchior Neumayr, Map of the geographical distribution of the Jurassic seas / 27 2. Alfred Wegener, Reconstruction of the map of the world for three periods according to the displacement theory / 31 3. Ernst Haeckel, A hypothetical sketch of the monophyletic origin and extension of the twelve races of Man from Lemuria over Earth / 39 4. Sivasailam Pillai, Katal Konta Kumarikkantam [Ocean-seized Kumarikkantam] / 177 5. W. Scott-Elliot, Lemuria at its greatest extent / 196 6. W. Scott-Elliot, Lemuria at a later period / 197 7. Wishar S. Cervé, Maps showing the shifting conWgurations of Lemuria / 202 8. Pulavar Kulanthai, Palaiya Tamilakam [Ancient Tamil Home-place] / 206 9. N. Mahalingam, India in 30,000 b.c.: Tamilnadu / 207 10. R. Mathivanan, Marainta Lemuriak Kantam [Vanished Lemuria Continent] / 208 xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This has not been the easiest thing to do, to write a scholarly book on a lost continent. Over the past six years I have been engaged in this enterprise, I have encountered some skeptics among my academic peers, who wondered about the relevance of my work and queried me about my reasons for undertaking it. To these good folks, one and all, I owe my Wrst expression of gratitude, for their skepticism has provoked me to be as analytically rigorous as possible, even while their incredulity has reminded me about the impor- tance of scholarly accountability for the projects we undertake. But I have also had the good fortune of receiving the encouragement and support of many. Foremost among these, I must mention David Gilmartin, who over numerous cups of tea (or glasses of beer!)—be it in Washington, Seattle, or Raleigh—patiently heard my ideas out, vigorously argued with me, gently urged me to consider avenues not taken, and then, in a rigorous reading of the penultimate version of this manuscript, offered concrete suggestions for improvement and Wnesse. I thank him for his mentorship, his friendship, and above all, for his own quirky sense of imag- ination which encouraged mine to flourish! Among others who read earlier versions of different chapters and offered me their advice, I wish to thank E. Annamalai, David Arnold, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Mathew Edney, Thomas Laquer, Tom Metcalf, Indira Peterson, Tom Trautmann, and Marcia Yonemoto. Over the past few years, I have spoken about Lemuria at the University of Pune, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Penn State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Colorado at Boulder, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Johns Hopkins University, and at the American Historical Association annual meetings, among others. I thank the audiences at these venues for their thoughtful suggestions and critiques. My colleagues, friends, and stu- xiii xiv acknowledgments dents in Ann Arbor gamely heard many of my ideas and helped me think through them. In particular, I wish to thank Lee Schlesinger for helping to keep me intellectually honest, and for emailing me the Oscar Wilde epi- graph when I was most in need of something like this to spur me on to Wnish this book! In Tamilnadu, numerous individuals were gracious with their time and resources. In particular, I want to thank R. Muthukumaraswamy, R. Mathi- vanan, N. Kasinathan, “Cilampoli” Chellapan, I. Mahadevan, Kodumudi Shanmugham, S. Padmanabhan of Nagerkovil, M. V. Chockalingam of the Tamilnadu Textbook Society, and Dorothy and B. Krishnamoorthy in Pudukottai. Without the help of the following, I could not have located many of the sources in Tamil that have gone into this study: Murugan at the Maraimalai Adigal Library, Shankaralingam and Sundar at the Roja Muthiah Research Library, Sunderarajan at the Perasiriyar K. Anbazhagan Library, plus Sivakumar, Kannan, Sairam, Prince, Namasivayam, and Rajendran at the Tamilnadu State Archives; I thank them one and all. Nalini Persad at the India OfWce Library helped me with sources in the British Library that I was unable to Wnd in India, and Mary Rader tracked down many a recalcitrant reference from her resourceful ofWce at the University of Michigan’s library. A special thanks to Theodore Baskaran for offering a helpful ear, and especially for introducing me to his brother, the geologist Christopher Jayakaran, who completed his own book on Lemuria while I was writing mine. And far away from India, but not in spirit, Irina Glushkova in Moscow helped with me information I needed on an elusive Russian publication on Lemuria, and at Wnal crunch-time, worked hard to put me in touch with the publishers of the book, from whom I needed permission for the reproduc- tion of the map that appears on the cover. This book would also not have been possible but for the very generous Wnancial and intellectual support I received from the following organiza- tions: the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A J. B. Harley Research Fellowship in the History of Cartography enabled me to spend some delightful months in the British Library’s Map Room, and I thank Tony Campbell and Catherine Delano- Smith for their support and encouragement. At the University of California Press, I wish to thank Sheila Levine, my original commissioning editor, and especially Reed Malcolm, who took over this project when it was near com- pletion and gave it his unwavering support. I also want to express my appre- ciation to my copy editor Ruth Steinberg, and to Kate Warne and her pro- duction team for shepherding the manuscript through the Wnal stages to print. My mother, in Chennai, housed me and fed me great meals over the acknowledgments xv many summers I did research for this book, and most recently, when I was writing parts of it. In addition, she lent a critical ear, asking questions that pushed me to amend and clarify. Across the world, in Tampa, Florida, my mother-in-law has always relentlessly encouraged me to pursue my ideas and imagination, however “wacky” they might seem to the outside world, and her friend Elaine Johnson gifted me with crucial occult books on Lemuria when I most needed them. Over the many years I have been married to him, Rich Freeman has been my best friend and critic, allowing me to generously borrow from his own areas of expertise in anthropology and Indology, keeping a check on my wilder flights of imagination, and demanding pre- cision in language and thought. At a time when he himself was pushed for time, and when my own patience had run out, he read every word of this manuscript, helping me to Wnesse my arguments, adding a crucial sentence here, deleting an embarrassing one there. As always, I owe him enormous gratitude for sharing my life, both professional and personal. I began my research on Lemuria in 1996 when my father was still alive. A civil engineer by training, he prided himself (as many Nehruvians of his generation in India still do) on his scientiWc rationality and on his rigorous querying of received traditions. Yet he was open to the very idea of Lemuria, always reminding me to rein in my skepticism and my own sense of in- credulity as I would come home from a day at the archives having encoun- tered one more “incredible” and “fantastic” notion. In retrospect, his gentle doubts about my own skepticism pushed me to pursue the line of thinking I eventually adopt in this book, more so perhaps than many a fashionable postcolonial critique of the politics of knowledge production.