I m not progressing very fast with the book as the huge complexity of early Kerali history has all but defeated me. However, I have managed a few chapters and will put some digests here. A good place tostart seems to be the geology and origin of the continent.
The report on Kerala by the Geological Survey of India in
2005 described the nature of the country in its easiest divisions: the sandy,
coastal plain; lumpy midland area, the foothills of the Western Ghats, and the
high mountain range which forms the spine of India. Forty-four rivers snake
their way across the midlands and the plain, often tearing the existing
geography apart as they roar off the mountains carrying up to 900cm of rain
water in a single season. Two of these rivers run eastwards, the rest
disgorging fertile silt and sand into the Arabian Sea to the west.
The country has attracted the interest of surveyors since
the beginning of the nineteenth century, mineral wealth being sought by the colonising
countries. There are several commercially useful minerals in Kerala, a sparse
amount of gold can be found and a sprinkling of semi-precious stones but the
extraction is predominantly of sand, limestone and a little bauxite.
Most of India formed as part of the ancient continent of
Pangaea, drifting north, away from Madagascar and what was later to become
Africa, settling against the Eurasian plate where it pushed the Himalayas up
into the mountain range we have today. In the process the wonderfully named
Deccan Traps poured their volcanic magma across a huge swathe of what is now
northern India and far into the southern peninsular. The Western Ghats heaved
themselves up out of this commotion and layers of sedimentary rocks have
accumulated limestone and sandstones in the usual Indian complication.
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| Looking towards the plains of Tamil Nadu |
On the ground it is easy to see the geological divisions.
The flat, sandy coastal strip, with its backwaters, coconut palms and paddy
fields gives way to lumps, some of which are incongruous and isolated, but
which soon begin to rise to the lower hillside slopes. The mountains on the
Kerala side grow slowly through their spectacular foothills, but on the Tamil
Nadu side there is a very steep and sheer scarp slope, almost a mile-high
cliff, cut with waterfalls which pour down in the monsoon season and outcrops
of bare granite.
Close to the time when the settlers from the North arrived
the Vedic myths were evolving. According to the Vedas, Parusama, an avatar of
Vishnu, set about slaughtering the arrogant ruling caste of Kshatrias with his
axe. Repenting of this sin, he handed over all the lands he had cleared to the
Brahmins and set off to the South. After meditating at Gokarna he finally
reached Kanyakumari and threw his axe far to the North where it landed in the
sea. It landed in the place now known as Kerala. This myth is ubiquitous and
underpins much of what is understood about the geology of the land. An earnest
young man in a rock overhang high in the mountains once told me that the
fossils which were found in the rocks were proof that Lord Parusama had created
the land from under the sea.
Just nine degrees
from the equator at its Indian Ocean tip; Kerala is hot and steamy and has a
South-Western monsoon, which comes in May and June with over four metres of
rain on the mountains. It is this enormous downpouring of water which has made
the other geological divisions so important for agriculture. The silt brought
down by the rains provides rich soil for growing three harvests a year of the
local rice in the plains. The scouring out of inlets at the mouths of the river
has also made sheltered harbours for an important preoccupation of the people
of the country, trade.
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