Paleolithic remains

   The Palaeolithic origin of India was not recognised until relatively recently, possibly because no-one had looked for it. This longest phase in the development of human history began some 600,000 years ago and lasted until about 8,000 BCE. It is characterised by the use of stone tools, from the rudimentary pebbles used for bashing at hard objects to the sophisticated and carefully made flint axes. The use of stone tools seems to have persisted in South India for longer than elsewhere and gave way to the use of iron in about 1400 BCE. Hunter-gatherer communities moved to farming and keeping livestock over a relatively short period.

Stone tools had been found in Tamil Nadu, but megalithic stones and the rock shelters had been ignored by researchers. Robert Foote, of the Geological Survey found stone axes near Madras but no systematic investigation of the ancient past was carried out. (See an article about Robert Foote here. The Hindu 2012)

A gradual appreciation of the ancient history of the area has led to a re-examination of many sites. Rock shelters display sophisticated art, and although tool finds are very rare, they do come to light now and again. The evidence for settlement between these two periods is extensive, dolmens, urn burials and rock art being found in many locations in Pallakkad, in the North of Kerala. The dolmen and megaliths are often badly looked after, but a renewed interest in history, even as far back as this, is making the study of these remains more popular and spreading the word to local populations, who take a pride in their discovered ancestry.

One of the most spectacular places to see the remains of the ancient tribes who lived here is at Edakkal.  A gradual appreciation of the ancient history of the area has led to a re-examination of many sites, Edakkal itself being excavated in 2010, many finds pointing to its occupation seven thousand years ago. The ancient is often wrapped up in the sacred in India, and legend tells that the caves were made when Lava and Kusha, the sons of Sri Rama, their tale told in the Ramayana, fired arrows in a battle, and Lord Rama killed Ravana’s sister Surpnakha in the narrow cleft in the rock to the south of the cave. This   pinpoints Edakkal as an important place in the distant past, one which is not past but contiguous with the present to many Hindus.

As well as the vast array of petroglyphs, there are inscriptions in Brahmi, a very early form of Sanskrit, indicating that Edakkal was used over many centuries.

The geological origins of Kerala

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.

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.

The next work

The book has not quite sunk without trace. Amazon send me a few pence every month, resulting in the need to fill in a tax return this year, which was quite a trauma! I have to fill in a USA declaration that I don't need to pay US tax, but Amazon.com tax me anyway, so my few pence are taxed twice. If I want to reclaim the two dollars I paid our friends across the Atlantic, I must get a tax lawyer. Perhaps I can offset it against gift aid.
As our eyes have turned to other parts of the world, so I have felt far removed from India. Vietnam and Cambodia were great, even if James did get a nasty bug in Dubai, but as we clean out our collection of books in an attempt to get rid of a storage unit (only James could think it a good idea to keep books in a storage unit) I am still bugged by the fact that there is no readable history of South India.
So why not write one, as I have already done half of the work? Not only that, we have several thousand photographs sitting around, a few of which are good. This is what retirement is for, I suppose. There is an urgency in doing things, but not much at stake if it all goes pear-shaped.
I am once again surrounded by dodgy research and my head is exploding with unpronounceable names, none of which translate easily into a Western alphabet.
I have got as far as the outline of Chapter 4 and it still hasn't got very interesting and I have a suspicion that we might need to go on a research trip again.
Back to the Pandayas, Chola, Cheras, Vijayanagras, Ays, Pallavas, Ezhimalas and anyone else who had a fiefdom in South India BCE. There are quite a few!

Object No. 11: Chinese Fishing Nets

The Chinese fishing nets along the front in Fort Kochi, and scattered throughout the backwaters, must be one of the most photographed objects in the world. They stand for the mystery and history of South India and in addition they are extremely photogenic. It is so easy to catch them with the setting sun behind them and during the day they make a dynamic setting for the working life of the town.
Searching for the definitive photo I am struck by just how many pictures we have of the nets, up, down, against the sky. I think my favourites are the ones of the nets as they exist in the community, on the edge of the backwaters.

The nets probably originated in China, links with the East being well established long before Fort Kochi was established following the earthquake in the 14th Century. The Chinese had come to India in the first Century CE in search of pepper and set up their main trading port in Quillon (Kollam). Supposed to have been brought to India in the 1400s by Chinese traders, the spidery Chinese nets are found only in Cochin and China. They have huge, counterweighted nets strung horizontally under fingers of rough timber. The nets are dipped in to the water and after a time, they are raised to see what they have scooped up. In the backwaters they fish at night, a lantern attached to the top of the gantry attracting the fish. The date of their introduction probably relates to the well-documented voyages of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who is thought to have taken his fleet of large ships as far as the coast of Africa.

The earliest contacts with the far East were probably along the silk routes, entering India to both the East and West of the Himalayas. This is the way that Buddhism would have made its journey across the continents. Maritime trade quickly followed, and it is likely that ships were following the coastal routes to the North-Eastern Ports by the 7th Century CE. Exactly when this trade reached Kerala is unknown.

Today the nets in Fort Kochi have been restored and are now working hard for the tourist trade. They rarely catch fish, but one can usually be fished out of a bucket for a photograph to add to the obligatory tip.

Object No. 10: the black Buddha of Kuttenad

Evidence of the long trek the first followers of the Buddha took from the North to the South of India and on to Sri Lanka is scarce. The Jain religion spread Southwards at about the same time, and although both of these religions were severely repressed by the Brahmins from about the 12th Century CE, there are complete Jain temples remaining, especially to the North in Wayanad. From about 600 CE there were likely to have been many of the Buddhist faith in Kerala, but these are represented now by a very few statues which have survived against all of the odds.

My favourite is the black statue which sits in a very unremarkable stupa in a field on a backwater between Alleppey and Kollam, deep into the Kuttenad region. It has lost some of its torso and one arm, its features are crumbled, but still serene and its legs are very small. (One of the effects of my computer crash has been the temporary loss of thousands of photos, and I can't find my pictures of this isolated, but moving, statue, so I have stolen a couple.)

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/398850110720541273/

The statue probably dates from the 9th Century, and when we visited it sat forlornly in a very plain, concrete structure, open to the elements and half-buried in the field. It did have offerings and incense burning near it, and had been anointed with turmeric for good fortune by the local villagers. The locals believe that the statue lost its arm when it was trampled by an elephant. The stupa in the picture above was donated by the Dalai Lhama.
These relics of the old faith are unsung across the South. We stumbled across another in the Krishnapuram Palace, about 40 miles South of Alleppey. This palace houses an interesting museum and the larger 10th Century statue is housed in a peaceful garden. It is one of four dug out of wells and tanks in the area and they are still coming to light.
Another sits at Buddha Junction in a grubby shrine, still visited daily by a lone resident.

http://www.alappuzhaonline.com/buddhajunctionmavelikara.htm

Those with a keen eye will see other images which might, or might not, be the Buddha in shrines and temples in the area, integrated into the Hindu pantheon, lacking the necessary serenity but relics of the long, historical journeys of faith taken by the people of South India.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale and some news

I haven't posted here for a while. This has been partly because my laptop melted down on me, courtesy of Windows 8.1 eating my graphics card. I had backed up some things, but not for a while, and lost the first two chapters of my next book, which caused me to go into grief mode for a couple of weeks while I frantically tried to retrieve everything I could.

While I was doing this I reflected on how different it is today from a few years ago. Much of what we do is in the cloud, my email and contact lists were safe, my book was on Amazon (although I had got a back up of the next-to-final proof-read version) my blog content was online and many of my pictures existed elsewhere.

Part of me was excited by a fresh start, a computer which is clean of everything, including software! Alerts for various things kept coming in to remind me of the ones before and I was in constant receipt of invitations to events at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which obviously I could not go to, but liked to see.

So, how did the great art show go? This article says a lot about how it is seem in the aftermath.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/kochimuziris-biennale-is-here-to-stay/article7054382.ece#

So half a million people visited? Really? I remain open-minded about this. It depends how you count. If it is ticket sales, then the figure is likely to be accurate. If it is the number of people attending the venues, then it is likely to be wildly out, as there were so many different places to go, all accessible by the same ticket, but able to be counted as separate attendances. Plans for the next biennale are already being made, and I hope it is as successful in artistic terms as this one. It was, unlike the first one, truly international, amazingly varied and brave.

As KPM Basheer wrote:

"At a time when individual freedoms are shrinking and moral policing is expanding across the country, the unlimited creative freedom enjoyed by the artists at the biennale was envied by many visitors. The wide variety of media – metal, stone, paper, video, light and shadows, lit electric bulbs, audio and the wild imagination excited even the casual visitor. " 
That tolerance and freedom are under review in India is indisputable. Prime Minister Modi's honeymoon period is nearly over, and there are worries about the place of women in society and increasing religious divides.
While we were in Fort Kochi we visited the Teapot cafe, one of the unchanging features of a fast-changing town. The Muslim waiter who had told us that he was going to vote for Modi at the election was less enthusiastic now. "We will have to see." he said. "We have not seen much change so far, but it is early days."

Washing at the Dhobi Khana

P.S. We visited the Dhobi Khana in Kochi and found it turned into a tourist destination! The people were hard at work bashing the washing in the usual way, but also allowing tourists to try out their charcoal-heated irons. Amazing!

A small woman with a massive iron

Another feature: Risky Tours

Item No. 9: Tea, part 2.

Taking the tea for weighing

Tea bushes were grown from seed at first, taken from tall parent plants. Now all the bushes come from cuttings and are grown in winding rows following the contours of the mountains, assuring the standard quality of the leaves. The plants, which would grow to over 30 feet if left alone, are pruned down to about a metre. Tall shade trees punctuate the manicured gardens, where women, with large
bags slung from their foreheads, pick the top two leaves and a bud. Four kilogrammes of leaves are required to make one kilogramme of black tea and an experienced plucker, carefully taking out the two leaves at the tip of the shoot, can pick thirty kilogrammes a day, a heavy load to cart around to the weighing stations. Tea bushes can live for a long time, but here they are renewed in patches across the gardens on a constant schedule. This can be anything from 25 to over 50 years.

Originally it was thought that green tea and black tea, both originating in China, came from two different bushes. After a period of skulduggery, when spies and collectors managed to travel within the closed areas of China, it was realised that tea, like the varieties of pepper, was one plant only.

This picture shows the camelia-family flower, the leaf and fruit on the right, and then the stages in processing. The wet, green leaves are crushed, and then for green tea they are simply dried. Black tea involves a fermentation process during which the unwanted stems are taken away as a sort of fluff, used as fertiliser, and the tea is dried and crushed to the required grade. Fermentation can take as little as 40 minutes and tea delivered to a factory in the afternoon is processed and packed by the following afternoon.

In spite of the fact that nearly all tea made in Kerala is black, and even that is mostly local dust, the Tata tea Museum in Munnar extols the benefits of drinking green tea:

“Enjoy your perfect cup of green tea:
Fill a non-reactive pot or pan with water and heat, when the air bubble come (80 to 85OC)Switch off the power or gas put the green tea 2 to 3 grams for 1.litre close the lid for 3minutes filter it and use 2 to 3 grams for 1.litre for one day is enough to kill the bacteria’s which is generating daily in our body frequently. Use small quantity at a time 2 to 3 ounce because you want to kill that much bacteria’s at a time.”
Tata Tea Museum, Munnar