original thiruk kadal mallai located?

[Guest guest]

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