BackGlimpses of the Cauvery from a bygone era
Ancient Tamil literature is replete with references to Kaveri, the grandeur of Kaverippattinam and Karikalan, who raised flood-banks to tame the river
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In our From the Annals section, we republish interesting excerpts from books long since out of print that are, in many cases, forgotten. This is one from T.G. Aravamuthan’s The Kaveri, the Maukharis and The Sangam Age published in 1925.
This edited excerpt briefly outlines the earliest historical references to the Kaveri and the Kollidam, a tributary. The complete book can be read or downloaded here.
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A history of the Kaveri will inevitably include the history of all the ancient kingdoms of the extreme south of India, except perhaps the Pandyan, but the history of the land along its lower course would greatly surpass in interest that of the countries in which its upper course lies. At the head of the island of Srirangam the river branches off into two, and acquires the tendency to branch off again and again, till, having given birth to the Tanjore delta and grown more and more attenuated, it becomes an insignificant streamlet, the thin waters of which vanish into the thirsty sands of Kaverippattinam, within almost a few yards of the sea.
But we seem also to have glimpses of an earlier stage when the Kaveri was a river of very respectable proportions at its mouth at Kaverippattinam, and the land through which it passed was liable to be devastated by floods. Hence it was that Karikalan had to raise flood-banks for the river. It may be that in those days there were very few branches springing from the Kaveri and distributing its waters over a wide area, but we have not the means of proving if it was so. One of the two earliest references in Tamil literature to branches of the Kaveri is where in the Silappadikaram the deity Vishnu is spoken of as lying recumbent in Srirangam, ‘a large island in the wide billows of the Kaveri’; this would be conclusive proof of the existence of the Kollidam in those days were it not that tradition points to the possibility of the two arms of the Kaveri having met again below the island as to flow along as a single river.
The other reference is to be found in the Narrinai, where the Arisilaru, a branch of the Kaveri to this day, is mentioned as flowing beside the village of Ambal.
If the Ceylon accounts are true that Karikalan’s flood-banks skirted the river to a distance of about 100 miles, and the Tillastanam inscription proves that it might well have been so, we should have to take it that they began practically from the island of Srirangam. The successors of Karikalan might have been far-sighted enough to have realized that the copious waters of the river which were wasting themselves into the sea might be used to irrigate the country round about and they might have started cutting channels to take water off from the Kaveri. After the Silappadikaram and the Narrinai, we have to pass down to the days of Jnanasambandha, the first half of the 7th century AD, to find in his psalms one reference to the Kollidam, a few references to the Arisilaru and some of the other branches of the Kaveri and four or five to a river called the Palankaveri (the Old Kaveri).
When we find that in the days of Karikalan the river wreaked havoc, in all probability because of having too few branches, and that, in the days of Jnanasambandha, the river and some of its branches irrigated a delta which was widely known for its great fertility, and what is more, when we find that thereafter we have no trace of complaint against the proclivities of the river to lay the country under floods, and when we also find the port of Kaverippattinam sinking into insignificance, though at that time the country round about it was growing, and ever since has been steadily growing, in importance and prosperity, a suggestion may be hazarded that the process of attenuating the river by taking off from it a series of channels was started by the successors of Karikalan and had been carried through to good purpose by the days of Jnanasambandha.
It may be that the first blow at the importance of the port of Kaverippattinam was the event recorded in the Manimekalai in some detail. The Chola king of the time having lost his son at sea wandered along the beach, distraught with grief, and the people abandoned in consequence the usual festival to Indra; thereupon, the patron deity of the city grew wrath and laid a curse on it. The sea quickly overwhelmed the city and in consequence the king betook himself elsewhere. This account does not make it clear whether Kaverippattinam was completely ruined and leaves us in doubt whether the present village is a fraction of the ancient city or is a new hamlet sprung from the carcass of a city long defunct. The other blows to befall it were probably the cutting of channels to divert the water from the main river Kaveri for irrigating areas not served by it. We might, therefore, conclude that the palmiest days of that city were those of Karikalan and of the composition of the Silappadikaram.
But we find it mentioned as an important port in the Geography of Ptolemy, the classical geographer, astronomer, mathematician and musician who flourished about the middle of the 2nd century AD. Ptolemy mentions ‘Khaberis, an emporium’ which has been identified with Kaverippattinam. He mentions also the ‘Mouth of the River Khaberos’ which has been recognized as the mouth of the river Kaveri. Two points seem to emerge from his mention of these two places. The first is that while Ptolemy gives 128°30’ and 15°40’ for Khaberis—Ptolemy had worked out a system of reckoning by latitudes and longitudes—he gives 129° and 15°15’ for the mouth of the Khaberos.
Howsoever we might frame a system of latitudes and longitudes and howsoever we might work it, we cannot arrive at the results he gives for two places in such juxtaposition as we are accustomed to associate with Kaverippattinam and the mouth of the Kaveri. Is it likely that Ptolemy was misled by the authorities on whom he relied? Or is it possible that by Ptolemy’s days the city and the river had divorced themselves? The second point is that in Ptolemy’s days the mouth of the Kaveri, as distinguished from Kaverippattinam was a spot of importance. Had the Kaveri been at its mouth the insignificant stream which it now is, it is most unlikely to have been noted and made special mention of by Ptolemy.
To admit that in the days of Ptolemy, the Kaveri was a river of notable proportions at its junction with the sea and to admit also that probably ever since the days of the Manimekalai, that is, one or two decades after the Silappadikaram and two or three decades after Karikalan, the Kaveri had been undergoing shrinkage in its lower course and diminishing at its mouth to almost the proportions of an Euclidean point, would not amount, however, to an admission that the dates of Karikalan and Ptolemy could not have been far distant from each other; for we do not know with certainty for how long before and after Karikalan’s times the damsel Kaveri ran due east and appeared near Kaverippattinam in an expanse of swelling waters nor yet the period when its attenuation started or the rate at which it progressed.
There is a widespread belief that the Kaveri flowed much farther north than now; there is even a tradition that the Kollidam is the real Kaveri. The tradition has its counterpart in the belief that the Kaverippattinam of today does not stand on the site of the city celebrated in Tamil literature. The difficulties of the problem are greatly increased by the fact that we have both a Palankollidam (or Old Kollidam) and a Kollidam (which, however, is not definitely called the New Kollidam). The former flows within about a mile of the latter from which really it seems to branch off. The width of the former is about a hundred yards while that of the latter is about three furlongs.
We cannot now be certain if the Kollidam was the Kaveri of which the Sangam works make mention, nor can we now profess to decide which of the two Kollidams, the Old or the New, is really the older. The river the width of which answers to the description of the Kaveri in the Sangam works does not now claim antiquity, and the river which has been traditionally considered the older of the two Kollidams has not the width associated with the Kaveri of the Sangam days.
If the distance between the mouth of the Kollidam and the present-day Kaveripattinam be fairly represented in the latitudes and longitudes of Ptolemy, we shall have to abandon the unanimous testimony of the most ancient among the available Tamil classics about Kaverippattinam standing on the Kaveri.
We might indulge in the supposition that Kaverippattinam is to be sought for elsewhere than in the sands on which lies perched the hamlet that goes now by that name were it not that local traditions associate a number of places in the neighbourhood with various incidents in the story of the Silappadikaram. Tradition against tradition leaves the historian in a plight identical with that in which the judge is left by oath against oath.
The belief that Kaverippattinam has not migrated along the sea coast has this much at least to support it that beside the village now going by that name are to be traced the relics of what must have been once a large city, whereas for miles higher up and lower down we do not come across sites which have the appearance of being the ruins of perished cities.
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