The blog ran away and left a note. The new address is http://palmleaf.wordpress.com
The reason for the move, it seems is that the history blog has a low visitor count and a hosted service is sufficient for now. It seems Superbowl Sunday was an auspicious day for the move and the updates will be done only there.
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Few days back, we had a review of Kalki's epic novel Ponniyin Selvan and had the question - where does a historical novelist get his characters from?
Books on Indian history talk mostly about the North Indian dynasties and only a few lines are spent for the South Indian ones. Even in those few lines, only the famous kings are mentioned and details are just glossed over. Thus when it comes to the Cholas, you may hear about Raja Raja Choza I and Rajendra Choza, but not about Parantaka I or Parantaka II.
One of the authoritative histories of South India, Nilakanta Sastri's A History of South India provides more detail. According to Sastri, Parantaka I ascended the throne on 907 A.D and ruled for forty-eight years. Even though there was prosperity during his time, thirty years (955 - 85) after his reign there was a period of weakness and confusion. Parantaka I was succeeded by his son Gandaraditya who with his queen Sembiyan-mahadevi played a major role in religion than in politics. By the time of the death of Gandaraditya in 957, the Choza dynasty had shrunk to the size of a small principality. Gandaraditya's brother Arinjaya ruled only for a year and was succeeded by his son Sundara Choza Parantaka II.
His son Aditya II was made the yuvaraja and and Sundara Chozha turned his attention to the south to defeat Vira Pandya. Sundara Choza defeated him and Vira Pandya was killed by Aditya II. The last years of Sundara Chozha were clouded with tragedy and this is the story told by Kalki's novel, Ponniyin Selvan.
According to Nilakanta Sastri, Uttama Choza conspired to murder Aditya II and compelled Sundara Chozha to recognize him as the heir apparent. He ruled till 985 A.D and after that Arulmozhi Varman, Sundara Chozha's second son took over and started the period of Choza imperialism.
That's all the information. So where does a novelist turn to find other characters and details of life at that time? What about Vandiyathevan or the conspirators Ravidasan and Soman, or Nandini? Did they really exist or were they created by Kalki?
Kalki's other sources were stone inscriptions, copper plates and other books. There is a stone tablet in the great temple of Thanjavur which has the following inscription: "The revered elder sister of Raja Raja Chozhar, the consort of Vallavarayar Vandiyathevar, Azwar Paranthakar Kundavaiyar". The book sources were K.A.Nilakanta Sastri's The Chozas and T.V.Sadasiva Pandarathar's Pirkala Chozhar Charitttiram. The second book has a five line reference to Vandiyathevan and from that, he became the hero of this novel. The names of the conspirators also came from a stone inscription.
Lot of information about the activities of various kings came from inscriptions like these as well as copper plates like the Anbil one. The Thiruvalangadu copper plates state, "The Choza people were very keen that after Sundara Chozan, Arulmozhi Varman should ascend the throne and rule their country. But Arulmozhi Varman respected the right of his Uncle Uttama Chozhan, the son of his father's younger brother, Kandaradithan, to the throne and crowned him King".
In the conclusion of the novel, Kalki frames a set of questions which the reader may have about the characters after the end of the novel and he talks about each one of them, but does not give any sources for the information.
There are not many blogs on Indian history and so it gives us great happiness to see yet another software engineer on this low-visitor-count market. Also, this new blog Indian Sculpture is inspired by The Palm Leaf
Indian temples are a great source of cultural information and goal of this new blog is to glean information of dress, weapons or anything else of that time period.
I am fascinated by the detail in these sculptures. It's almost like they were 3-D photographs of their day. Many of the sculptures that I saw had different faces and had different accesories. They were clearly meant to represent different people. Whether or not it was real people or the sculptor's fancy is anyone's guess. It's pretty amazing how many details spring to your eye once you actually start looking for this sort of thing though.
Ponniyin Selvan by "Kalki" Krishnamurthy, Macmillan India, ~1800 pages.
Who should be the king? This was the question that members and enemies of the Chozha dynasty were asking each other in 10th century Tamil Nadu and the incidents around this episode forms the plot for R. Krishnamurthy's (pen name: Kalki) epic novel Ponniyin Selvan. This novel was first published in serial form in the Tamil weekly magazine Kalki from 1950 - 1954. Though Krishnamurthy wrote a large number of short stories, it was as a novelist that he got fame. He was also the first significant historical novelist in Tamil and his other works include Parthiban Kanavu and Sivagamiyin Sabatham.
Parantaka Chozha was succeeded by his second son Kandaraditha as the first son Rajaditha had died in a battle. On the death of Kandaraditha, his son Maduranthaka was a child and hence Kandaraditha's brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. After Arinjaya's death, his son Parantaka II, Sundara Choza was coronated. He had two sons, Aditha Karikalan and Arulmozhi Varman and a daughter Kundavai.
When the story starts, the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. Aditha Karikalan is the general of the Northen Command and lived in Kanchi and Arulmozhi Varman (who would be famous later as Rajaraja Chola I) is in Sri Lanka in battle and their sister Kundavai Piratti lived in Chola royal household at Pazhayari.
The story is set in motion, when rumor starts that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chozhar and his sons. One person who gets a glimpse of the Pandya conspirators is a warrior of the Vana clan Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan. Even though the book is titled Ponniyin Selvan, the hero of the book is Vandiyathevan, a friend of Adhitha Karikalan.
It is through Vandiyathevan that we meet most of the characters in the novel such as Arulmozhi Varman, the prince whom all the people loved and Periya Pazhavetturayar, the chancellor who married Nandini when he was sixty. During his youth Aditha Karikalan had fallen in love with Nandini, but she turned vengeful after Aditha Karikalan killed Veerapadyan (who was either Nandini's father or brother) and vowed to destroy the Chozha dynasty. We also meet Kundavai Devi, who after hearing the news of the conspiracy sends Vandiyathevan to Sri Lanka to give a message to Arulmozhi Varman to come back immediately.
In the period between the Mauryas and Guptas lot of wealth and energy were spent on Buddhist architecture and one of their major symbol was the stupa. The main sites of Buddhist stupas are Bharhut and Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh and Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh.
The stupa in Amaravati, which is larger than the more famous one in Sanchi, was originally built during the time of Emperor Asoka. It was completed in 200 A.D and is decorated with carved panels which tell the story of Buddha's life. This region between Krishna and Godavari was an important place for Buddhism from the 2nd century B.C and some ancient sculpture in low relief has been found here. During the Satavahana period (2nd - 3rd century A.D), Dharanikota near Amaravati was chosen as the capital. The stupa was then adorned with limestone reliefs and free standing Buddha figures. [13]
During the period of the decline of Buddhism, this stupa was also neglected and it was burried under rubble. There is a 14th century inscription in Sri Lanka which mentions repairs made to the stupa and after that it was forgotten.
If the early history of Amaravati and its stupa is dramatic and intriguing, its chance re-discovery by the archaeologists is more so. Around the year 1796, an enterprising zamindar shifted his residence from crowded Chintapalli to deserted Amaravati. He soon invited other people to settle in Amaravati. This led to the construction of roads and houses in the area. In the course of construction, the workers often found large bricks and carved limestone slabs below the ground. The news soon reached the ears of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, who visited the site twice (in 1787 and 1818) and prepared drawings and sketches of the relics in the area. Eventually, several European scholars like Sir Walter Smith, Robert Sewell, James Burgess and Alexander Rea excavated the site and unearthed many sculptures that once adorned the stupa. In recent decades, the Archaeological Survey of India has conducted further excavations in the area.The Amravati school of art had great influence on art in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia as products from here were carried to those countries. It also had influence over South Indian sculpture. The Government Museum at Egmore (Madras Museum), one of the oldest and largest museums in Asia hosts the "Amaravati Gallery".Art historians regard the Amaravati art as one of the three major styles or schools of ancient Indian art, the other two being the Gandhara style and the Mathura style. Some of the Buddhist sculptures of Amaravati betray a Greco-Roman influence that was the direct result of the close trade and diplomatic contacts between South India and the ancient Romans. Indeed, Amaravati has itself yielded a few Roman coins[History in stone]
Historians who do not believe the Aryan Invasion Theory say that folks who believe in it are biased towards Europeans. Folks who believe in Aryan Invasion Theory think that others are biased towards Indians. But in this biased word of history, have you heard of people who are biased against millets? Who can be so stone-hearted to be biased against those small-seeded species of cereal grown around the world for food and fodder?
Such evil people do exist and the people who do this are rice and wheat lovers. In fact, if you look at the history of millet farming you may be able to identify the period and place of the first farmer according to Steve Weber of Washington State University.
'These are the facts. In Southern India, millets were being cultivated as old as 3000 BC to 2500 BC, while rice came into existence only by 500 BC. and in North India, millet cultivation was even there before it made an entry in South India'' said Fuller. Weber added, "There have been sites in Gujarat, India, and even a few Harappan sites, which have been primarily millet-dominant.''A recent discovery of a grain of rice in India may prove Weber to be wrong. Excavations in Lahuradeva in Uttar Pradesh have shown that people of this region took to farming and domestication of animals about 10,000 years back.Weber says that since millets were more nutritious and were even drought- resistant, perhaps more and more people started cultivating them before anything else. "In India, China and South Africa, millets were the staple diet. And surprisingly, the so very Indian millets like ragi, jowar and bajra actually come from South Africa.''
"The British started researching with rice and wheat and even today, organisations like the UN and FAO concentrate on that. This may have been because rice and wheat are bigger grains and easier to identify, whereas millets were smaller and more time-consuming to find," they opined. [Millets older than wheat, rice: Archaeologists]
Usually archaeologists find artifcats like terracota idols, amphorae or the first labelled portaiture of Emperor Asoka. They also find old temples, forts, boats, and sometimes even skeletons. But it is only once in a blue moon that they find an entire state and this is what happened in China.
The existence of this 3000 year old state, Peng, was never recorded in any historical documents, but only in some inscriptions in bronzeware excavated from two Western Zhou Dynasty tombs
Li Boqian, director of the archaeological research center of the prestigious Beijing University, said at an archaeological forum recently in Beijing that the discovery of the Western Zhou graves in Hengshui is the most important archaeological discovery since the excavation of the graves of the Marquis of Jin, another state of the Western Zhou Dynasty, in Quwo County of Shanxi Province.Tags: archaeology china peng Zhou Dynasty HengshuiThe newly found ancient state will help archaeologists and historians better understand the history of the Western Zhou Dynasty and its jurisdiction, Li said.
More than 80 tombs have been excavated at the site in Hengshui, with the tombs of Pengbo and his wife the largest ones. The couple were buried side by side with lots of funeral objects such as bronze ware, carriages and jade, said Song Jianzhong, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology of Shanxi Province.
One of the most important findings in the graves is the remains of a pall covering the coffins. The remains of the pall, already blended with earth after several thousand years, are still a vivid red color. Phoenix patterns can be seen on the pall, said Song.[3,000-year-old ancient state found in Shanxi]
The stegodon was a elephant like animal that lived in Asia about 5.3 million to 1.8 million years before present. These animals were about 13 feet high, 26 feet long and had 10 feet long tusks. Stegodons were earlier considered to the ancestor of elephants and mammoths, but now they are considered to be the sister group of the mammoth and the Indian and African elephant. Recently archaeologists from the ASI (where else?) found some tools in Jharkhand's East Singhbhum which resemble the stegodon.
The deep elephant-shapped furrows stunningly resembled 'stegodon', the first of the true elephants that had probably roamed in this part of the world during the 'pleistocene' period, the official said. Chauhan said the length of the 'elongated' truck is very long and the about four-inch imprint point to a primitive species. "This unusual figure of an elephant on the stone at Basadera takes one back to a primitive period," he said."The technique 'block-on-anvil' and 'block-on-block' adopted to shape and size the tools found by us and their striking similarity with the tools discovered in the river valley indicate the age of human habitation which could be older than the one discovered near Jamshola by the anthropologists from Kolkata," he said. The discoveries should be enough pointer to the perception that East Singhbhum might have seen transformation of primitive men, he said. [Vital clues about primitive human beings]
Tags: stegodon archaeology Jharkhand
In 2004, there was a spectacular archaeological discovery in Adichanallur, near Tirunelveli when 2800 years old human skeletons were found in urns. These urns also contained writing resembing early Tamil Brahmi. Later a three-tier burrial system was discovered in which earlier generations were burried in urns at 10 ft depth and recent ones above them. Soon the habitational site of the people who were burried was also discovered.
Analyzing the habitational site, it was understood that people lived in a fortified town and it had a separate potters quarters. There was also evidence of industrial activity and archaeologists think that it was a crowded busy town. The analysis of these skeletons have revealed some new facts.
Before the Cheras established themselves as a major force in Kerala, it was ruled by the Ay dynasty sometime between 7th to 11th century AD with Vizhinjam as the capital.The Ay dynasty ruled the land between Nagercoil and Thiruvalla. In A History of South India, Nilakanta Sastry writes that the Ay kingdom lay around the Podiya hill, the southernmost section of the Western Ghats. He also writes that the Greek geographer Ptolemy wrote about one 'Aioi' was ruling the country at that time which included Cape Comorin and Mount Bettigo.
Last year there was news that a 9th century Vishnu temple was being rebuilt due to the initiative of the local people. This temple is unique since it is one of those which have a circular sanctum santorum. Much before this, when the kings of the Ay dynasty shifted their capital to Vizhinjam, they built a fort which is now considered to be the oldest fort in Kerala dating to the eighth or ninth century.
A preliminary investigation by the team has revealed the fort might have originally been 800 sq. m in area. The fort's wall can be found on the northern and western (seaside) parts and has been constructed using large boulders set in mud mortar. The wide base of the wall tapers on its way up. According to Dr. Ajit, one important clue in dating the fort is that the walls have no battlements or `loop holes' (holes to place cannons in). This is typical of early forts, he says.The team was also able to trace literary and epigraphical references - of 9 AD to 12 AD vintage - to a fort and port at Vizhinjam. Sangam literature such as `Pandikkovai', `Iraiyanar Ahapporul Urai', `Kalingattup-parani', of Jayamkondar, and `Vikrama-solan-ula' are said to have numerous references to the existence of a fort, port and a mansion at Vizhinjam.
Moreover, the Srivaramangalam copper plate s of Pandyan King Nedum Chadayan ( 8 AD) have clear reference to Vizhinjam and its fort. "Here, the fort is described as surrounded by waters of three seas, protected by a wide moat, high walls which the sun's rays do not touch and so on. Leaving aside the hyperbole typical of such inscriptions, the ground evidence at Vizhinjam that we got fits this description of the old fort. In fact the port at Vizhinjam has been mentioned in the work `The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea', a work of the first century AD. Here Vizhinjam has been called as Balita," said Dr. Ajit. [Ninth century fort discovered at Vizhinjam]
Tags: Ay Dynasty kerala vizhinjam ptolemy archaeology
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