Is Ceylon the Lanka mentioned in Ramayana?

[Guest guest]

> > This is a good point. As Krsna says "The material world is endlessly

> > mutable." I will have to go back a reread some stuff I researched about

> > 10 years back in various puranas about how things were in each yuga. I

> > seem to recall some information in relationship to size and distance....

>

> > The whole topic (plate tectonics and its competitor) seems very

> > speculative.

>

> That would be really interesting. I have always wondered about this

> because geologists do have their theories about tectonic plates and

> continental drift etc. and some of it must be based on reasonable

> evidence. And it would be unreasonable to assume that everything now is

> exactly the same as it was millions of years ago. Even in sastra we read

> about the rule of Maharaja Prthu and how he leveled the mountains etc. to

> create areas for growing food. So change is bound to occur and not

> everything modern scientist observe is wrong.

 

And how mountains once had wings and could fly until Indra cut the wings

off.

 

In Krta-yuga all the Mountains in the world had wings. They used to fly

about here and there like Garuda with the speed of wind. The sages and the

Devas feared that they might fall on their heads. The Devas held a

conference and elected Indra to find a remedy for this. Indra cut off the

wings of the mountains with his Vajra. The Mainaka mountain was a friend of

Vayu. When Indra was about to cut off the wings of that mountain, Vayu

suddenly removed it and deposited it in the ocean. It is out of his

gratitude for this that the Mainaka mountain rose up from the ocean and

provided a resting place for Hanuman, the son of Wind god, when he jumped to

Lanka. This story was told by Mainaka mountain to Hanuman. (Valmiki

Ramayana, Sundara Kanda, 1st Sarga).

 

 

 

>

> > One thing though, units of measure such as the "foot" are based on body

> > parts. Assuming larger bodies in former yugas then their yojanas would

> > be even bigger than ours. That is a possibility as well don't you think?

> > (-: So their 100 yojanas wold be enormous compared to our 100 yojanas..

> > Just a thought.

>

> And another point would be that in some sastras the yojana is said

> to be equivalent to 6 miles, not 8. So that would make the distance of 100

> yojanas only 600 miles and not 800. But if Sri Lanka is only 2.5 yojanas,

> that still wouldn't account for it.

 

As I recall it was that in some texts it was stated that a yojana was 5

miles in length. Sadaputa has written that after doing a computer analysis

of all possible length of a yojana, the "best fit" that makes sense of

statements in various scientific sastras was in the range of 7.5

miles/yojana--very close to 8 miles/yojana.

 

 

>

> The stuff about the land masses of India and Sri Lanka is

> interesting also as is the Maldives. But then, if modern Sri Lanka isn't

> the place, why would the inhabitants have pilgrimage places dedicated to

> the pastimes of Lord Rama; why not the Maldives? I wonder how long the

> pilgrimage places in Sri Lanka date back to?

 

My understanding is that the present Maldives are only recent coral atoll

formations. The mountains actually sank below the surface of the ocean by

the double effect of their own sinking and the water rising. But they were

near enough the surface that coral developed and they are technically coral

atoll islands.

 

The level of oceans can rise and fall dramatically over the course of time.

At one time the oceans were 10,000 feet shallower than they are today. In

other words the ocean level has risen 10,000 feet in the last 10-15,000

years. Where did all that water come from you ask? Good question. From the

melting of Ice Age glaciers that covered most of the northern hemisphere

with continental ice sheets 1-2 miles thick.

 

See: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Ice_Age.html

 

"At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because

the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature, partly

for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand

until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick, creeping

ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the

southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal moraine,

stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New

Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then up the

Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate

was buried under one to two miles of ice."

 

This article just mentions North America but if you take the same latitudes

East and West into Europe, Eurasia and Asia it would all be covered with an

ice sheet 1-2 miles (approximately 5000-10000 feet) thick. The water forming

that ice had to come from somewhere, namely the oceans and seas. So when the

ice age ended the water level rose proportional with the melting of millions

of square miles of continental ice sheets 1-2 miles thick.

 

Getting to my point. You ask "Why do the inhabitants of the Maldives not

have places commemorating the pastimes of the Ramayana?" If we postulate

that the area of the Maldives was the area of the actual Lanka, then it

would seem that since the islands were covered by water because of the dual

rising of water level and their own sinking that at one time there was

nothing above the surface of the water; hence, no population to remember

what happened there. The current islands are coral atolls.

 

For an explanation of how such islands are formed see:

 

http://www.athro.com/sci/atoll.html

 

Excerpt (not the only possibility doesn't have to be a volcano but gives

basic idea):

 

"Coral islands form a series. First an island is formed by a volcano, then

corals start to grow as a fringing reef around the island. Over time the

volcano dies and starts to erode and subside, while the corals grow up into

a large barrier reef around the volcanic island. The old volcanic island

continues to subside and sink beneath the sea, while the coral reef

continues to grow upwards, maintaining a coral island at the sea surface.

Given the slow growth of coral and lots of time, an old volcanic island can

subside far below the surface of the sea, while a coral reef perched atop

the island continuously grows upwards keeping the reef at sea level even

while its volcanic roots subside deep beneath it."