PAMA Institute for the Advancement of Trans-disciplinary Archaeological Sciences is right now engaged in the challenge of rediscovering historical Tamilakam for more than a few causes. The Indian historiography has handled the ancient experiences of peninsular India, compared to different areas, as secondary if now not inferior.
From mythologies to colonial and post-colonial historiography this prejudice seems to have continued unabated. This is relatively glaring in any paintings that engages the historical past of the subcontinent. This state of affairs needs a essential and balanced engagement. P J Cherian, who's the director of PAMA, speaks to M T Saju in regards to the relevance of rediscovering the ancient Tamilakam.
Could you please let us know about your new challenge, ‘rediscovering the ancient websites in Tamilakam’?
We have taken up the early historical segment (500BC to 500AD) that is the Tamilakam length for scrutiny mainly on account of the exponential increase in the archaeological knowledge of the length. In the last ten years, the Tamilakam area has witnessed a couple of pathbreaking excavations. To point out just 3, Pattanam, Keezhadi and Kodumanal have unearthed intimidatingly large quantity of subject matter knowledge, facilitating and necessitating new readings.
Another nice benefit of this segment is the already available huge quantity of textual assets of the Sangam age. Scholars have interpreted these assets at a time when the new archaeological proof was now not at their disposal.
Literary assets will also be regarded as trustworthy simplest to the level that they are able to be substantiated by way of archaeological proof. Tallying of the new archaeological proof with a re-reading of the textual supply is one of the goals of our challenge.
If we follow the biography of the artefacts from Pattanam, it should take historical Tamilakam now not simplest to the faraway corners of the Indian subcontinent but additionally to the ends of the then recognized world. To be exact, Pattanam has unearthed artefacts that belong to areas from Catalonia in Spain to Hepu archaeological web site in South China. Rediscovering historical Tamilakam might take us to the cultural foundations of pre-modern humanity; Tamilakam had interfaces with more than 30 cultural groups and more than 40 port websites across the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Mediterranean. It was an exchange-network of people, goods, cultures and applied sciences. This second maritime urban and substitute revolution took place 15 centuries before Vasco da Gama reached India and Columbus reached the American continent.
P J Cherian all through a field travel
A bit of in regards to the geographical location of Tamilakam?
Thanks to the geographical location of Tamilakam jetting into the center of Indian Ocean, her natural and human sources, which were essential for her presiding role in the first ever world transactions. The European and American students who have been acquainted with the classical Greek and Latin assets say Muziris can have been the trendy New York or London or Shanghai port, 2000 years in the past.
Another reason is to distance us somewhat from the socio-cultural and political captivities of the current times. How many trained people of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, South Canara and Southern Andhra know that after they belonged to the similar human geography, sharing numerous socio-cultural and technological aspects of life?
We won't fail to understand that the spiritual, political, social and administrative partitions that separate us nowadays may well be traces drawn on water. Engaging archaeological proof may have a subversive potential to make us rethink on our rapid identities.
How’s the challenge working out?
Well, in the first segment of the challenge we are looking to record the unearthed archaeological proof of the Tamilakam area. This exercise will probably be essential in reconstructing the fabric tradition of Tamilakam and beyond.
As a ways as Kerala area of historical Tamilakam is regarded as, this challenge has greater relevance. With little proximity to Sangam literary assets and the later Malayalam id dominating beneath Sanskritic influence, Kerala area lost her organic highbrow and social connections with Tamilakam.
With the birth of modern states and the confining of the vestiges of classical Tamil segment to Tamil Nadu, the Kerala area’s history virtually starts from 9th century AD. The Kerala historiography continues to be dominated by way of the belief that the pre-9th century was a length of primitive backwardness.
What are the primary evidences that you've won to justify this?
We had an on-hand documentation of the Kodumal, Alagankulam, Korkai, Pattaraiperumbudur excavated materials beneath the custody of Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department. We may just also record the artefacts excavated from Adichanallur and the Nilagiri websites on the division of Museum. We may just discern from them the technological and cultural connections of those artefacts with the Pattanam archaeological knowledge. They represent the society of Tamilakam from mature Iron Age to the Early Historic length.
You have discussed that only a little part of the Pattanam area has been excavated up to now. Why?
From 2006 to 2015 we could excavate simplest less than one p.c of the Pattanam archaeological mound. From a barefoot archaeology challenge Pattanam evolved right into a collaborative exercise of world academic have an effect on. I think sorry that we couldn’t excavate Pattanam in the 10th season although the ASI had given the vital licence.
I latterly met the manager minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan and appealed to him to permit Pattanam excavations to continue.
Do you assume many archaeological websites in Tamil Nadu deserve a rediscovery? How does 'rediscovery' paintings?
Yes. Absolutely. The prerequisite is science and respect for ancestors. Tamilnadu/Tamilakam may well be probably the most delicate societies in the subcontinent since we have a tendency to be more medical and emotional. Excavations, unlike what's practised nowadays, wish to be conceived as one essential procedure in the long chain of medical collective procedures.
The subtropical climate of Tamil Nadu which levels from dry sub-humid to semi-arid situation is more conducive to web site formation process and the preservation of beneath artefacts compared to Kerala area.
In the choice of excavated websites also Tamil Nadu is much ahead of Kerala and most different states. It has a monitor document of 40 websites excavated by way of the state division of which 20 plus belong to the huge Tamilakam segment. Tamil Nadu has to take the lead by way of intensive excavations and imaginative and medical conservative measures.
Keezhadi archaeological web site
How do you look at the findings of the Keezhadi web site near Madurai?
Keezhadi is an important web site as far as the emergence of urban or complex societies in south India. There is a belief amongst a section of students that Tamilakam society was rural in persona and the urban shift that north India witnessed around sixth century BC is absent in south India. The complex options found previous at Veeram Pattinam (Arikamedu) and not too long ago at Pattanam have been dismissed as the left-overs of the overseas investors.
True to the colonial tradition they termed the websites as Roman or later Indo-Roman. Keezhadi has given a critical blow to the colonial spectre haunting Veeram Pattinam and Pattanam. The elaborate structural remains found at a hinterland web site in the neighborhood of Madurai is the clinching proof of south Indian urban process that starts in the mature Iron Age of Tamilakam around 1000 BC.
From mythologies to colonial and post-colonial historiography this prejudice seems to have continued unabated. This is relatively glaring in any paintings that engages the historical past of the subcontinent. This state of affairs needs a essential and balanced engagement. P J Cherian, who's the director of PAMA, speaks to M T Saju in regards to the relevance of rediscovering the ancient Tamilakam.
Could you please let us know about your new challenge, ‘rediscovering the ancient websites in Tamilakam’?
We have taken up the early historical segment (500BC to 500AD) that is the Tamilakam length for scrutiny mainly on account of the exponential increase in the archaeological knowledge of the length. In the last ten years, the Tamilakam area has witnessed a couple of pathbreaking excavations. To point out just 3, Pattanam, Keezhadi and Kodumanal have unearthed intimidatingly large quantity of subject matter knowledge, facilitating and necessitating new readings.
Another nice benefit of this segment is the already available huge quantity of textual assets of the Sangam age. Scholars have interpreted these assets at a time when the new archaeological proof was now not at their disposal.
Literary assets will also be regarded as trustworthy simplest to the level that they are able to be substantiated by way of archaeological proof. Tallying of the new archaeological proof with a re-reading of the textual supply is one of the goals of our challenge.
If we follow the biography of the artefacts from Pattanam, it should take historical Tamilakam now not simplest to the faraway corners of the Indian subcontinent but additionally to the ends of the then recognized world. To be exact, Pattanam has unearthed artefacts that belong to areas from Catalonia in Spain to Hepu archaeological web site in South China. Rediscovering historical Tamilakam might take us to the cultural foundations of pre-modern humanity; Tamilakam had interfaces with more than 30 cultural groups and more than 40 port websites across the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Mediterranean. It was an exchange-network of people, goods, cultures and applied sciences. This second maritime urban and substitute revolution took place 15 centuries before Vasco da Gama reached India and Columbus reached the American continent.
P J Cherian all through a field travel
A bit of in regards to the geographical location of Tamilakam?
Thanks to the geographical location of Tamilakam jetting into the center of Indian Ocean, her natural and human sources, which were essential for her presiding role in the first ever world transactions. The European and American students who have been acquainted with the classical Greek and Latin assets say Muziris can have been the trendy New York or London or Shanghai port, 2000 years in the past.
Another reason is to distance us somewhat from the socio-cultural and political captivities of the current times. How many trained people of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, South Canara and Southern Andhra know that after they belonged to the similar human geography, sharing numerous socio-cultural and technological aspects of life?
We won't fail to understand that the spiritual, political, social and administrative partitions that separate us nowadays may well be traces drawn on water. Engaging archaeological proof may have a subversive potential to make us rethink on our rapid identities.
How’s the challenge working out?
Well, in the first segment of the challenge we are looking to record the unearthed archaeological proof of the Tamilakam area. This exercise will probably be essential in reconstructing the fabric tradition of Tamilakam and beyond.
As a ways as Kerala area of historical Tamilakam is regarded as, this challenge has greater relevance. With little proximity to Sangam literary assets and the later Malayalam id dominating beneath Sanskritic influence, Kerala area lost her organic highbrow and social connections with Tamilakam.
With the birth of modern states and the confining of the vestiges of classical Tamil segment to Tamil Nadu, the Kerala area’s history virtually starts from 9th century AD. The Kerala historiography continues to be dominated by way of the belief that the pre-9th century was a length of primitive backwardness.
What are the primary evidences that you've won to justify this?
We had an on-hand documentation of the Kodumal, Alagankulam, Korkai, Pattaraiperumbudur excavated materials beneath the custody of Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department. We may just also record the artefacts excavated from Adichanallur and the Nilagiri websites on the division of Museum. We may just discern from them the technological and cultural connections of those artefacts with the Pattanam archaeological knowledge. They represent the society of Tamilakam from mature Iron Age to the Early Historic length.
You have discussed that only a little part of the Pattanam area has been excavated up to now. Why?
From 2006 to 2015 we could excavate simplest less than one p.c of the Pattanam archaeological mound. From a barefoot archaeology challenge Pattanam evolved right into a collaborative exercise of world academic have an effect on. I think sorry that we couldn’t excavate Pattanam in the 10th season although the ASI had given the vital licence.
I latterly met the manager minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan and appealed to him to permit Pattanam excavations to continue.
Do you assume many archaeological websites in Tamil Nadu deserve a rediscovery? How does 'rediscovery' paintings?
Yes. Absolutely. The prerequisite is science and respect for ancestors. Tamilnadu/Tamilakam may well be probably the most delicate societies in the subcontinent since we have a tendency to be more medical and emotional. Excavations, unlike what's practised nowadays, wish to be conceived as one essential procedure in the long chain of medical collective procedures.
The subtropical climate of Tamil Nadu which levels from dry sub-humid to semi-arid situation is more conducive to web site formation process and the preservation of beneath artefacts compared to Kerala area.
In the choice of excavated websites also Tamil Nadu is much ahead of Kerala and most different states. It has a monitor document of 40 websites excavated by way of the state division of which 20 plus belong to the huge Tamilakam segment. Tamil Nadu has to take the lead by way of intensive excavations and imaginative and medical conservative measures.
Keezhadi archaeological web site
How do you look at the findings of the Keezhadi web site near Madurai?
Keezhadi is an important web site as far as the emergence of urban or complex societies in south India. There is a belief amongst a section of students that Tamilakam society was rural in persona and the urban shift that north India witnessed around sixth century BC is absent in south India. The complex options found previous at Veeram Pattinam (Arikamedu) and not too long ago at Pattanam have been dismissed as the left-overs of the overseas investors.
True to the colonial tradition they termed the websites as Roman or later Indo-Roman. Keezhadi has given a critical blow to the colonial spectre haunting Veeram Pattinam and Pattanam. The elaborate structural remains found at a hinterland web site in the neighborhood of Madurai is the clinching proof of south Indian urban process that starts in the mature Iron Age of Tamilakam around 1000 BC.
Do ancient Tamilakam sites deserve rediscovery?
![Do ancient Tamilakam sites deserve rediscovery?]()
Reviewed by Kailash
on
November 30, 2018
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