Manimekalai

 

Draupadi, Kunti, Sita, are the names we usually come across in the context of the epics. The strong women in the  epics of south India are less well known.

The Shilapaddikaram,  a Tamil verse epic composed by Ilango Adigal, narrates the story of Kovalan and Kannaki, a married couple. Kovalan fell in love with the dancer Madhavi, and spent all his money on her. Kannaki however remained faithful to Kovalan, and penniless, the couple reached the city of Madurai. Kannaki then took off one of her anklets and gave it to Kovalan to sell, but in the market he was accused as a thief, as the queen had lost a similar anklet. The falsely accused Kovalan was put to death, and Kannaki, when she heard of it, stormed through the city in grief. Finally she was taken to the king, and when she showed him her remaining anklet which was different from that of the queen, he realized he had falsely condemned an innocent man. ‘I am no king’ he said, and in shock he fell down dead. Kannaki then tore off one of her breasts and threw it in the city, which went up in flames. Thus she destroyed the king and his city, and finally retreated to a hill where she died a few days later, rejoining her husband in heaven. Kannaki is worshipped as the goddess Pattini in the Tamil region, a symbol of a wife’s chastity, devotion and loyalty to her husband.

Manimekalai , the sequel to the Shilapaddikaram written by Kulavanigam Chittalai Shattanar [also spelt Cattanar], tells the story of  the beautiful young daughter of Kovalan and the dancer Madhavi.  After Kovalan’s unjust death the courtesan  Madhavi became a Buddhist nun. Her daughter Manimekalai, despite her beauty, shunned the pleasures of the world, and sought truth, finally gaining  ultimate knowledge.

 The story is set in the second century CE in the Tamil region. The text itself  has been dated by various scholars between the second and sixth centuries CE. It  consists of a preface followed by thirty verse chapters. It has many aspects of an epic, with a number of characters, magic, talking statues, and numerous sub-stories.

 The text is considered a Perumkappiyan [Sanskrit: Mahakavya] or great kavya of Tamil literature.

Though her age is not mentioned, Manimekalai is a young girl when the story begins. She was pursued by Udayakumara, prince of the Chola dynasty, as handsome as the god Murugan, but she eluded him.  The ocean goddess  Manimekala, after whom she was named, cast a spell on Manimekalai to make her sleep, and carried her through the air, leaving her on the island of Manipallavam, far away in the middle of the sea. The goddess then returned to the city of Puhar. She went to prince Udayakumara, and warned him to leave Manimekalai alone.  Then the goddess woke Sutamati, Manimekalai’s best friend, told her that Manimekalai would return in seven days, and asked her to go to Madhavi and tell her that the goddess Manimekala had arrived, and had stated that  Manimekalai was destined for a life of asceticism and renunciation.

On the island, Manimekalai was initially afraid, but seeing a magical pedestal of the Buddha’s image, her life and destiny were revealed to her. She received a magic bowl, which could provide her with an inexhaustible supply of food, to feed the hungry. Many more adventures awaited her, while  the Chola prince still pursuing her, was accidently killed.  After narrating her past life, the goddess explained that before proceeding on the Buddhist path, Manimekalai would have to live as an ascetic and study other religions. But as a young woman would not be taken seriously, the goddess gave her secret mantras, through which she could change her appearance and travel through the air. She also revealed  some magic words, which would nourish Manimekalai in case she had no food.  The goddess then disappeared.

Manimekalai, Madhavi and Sutamati went to the great Buddhist teacher, Aravana Adigal.  Manimekalai narrated to him all that had happened so far, and he told her more about the past lives of her mother and friend Sutamati. He also explained some points of Buddhism. The mass of people, he said could not be drawn to the noble Buddhist path, but a few may be influenced to follow it.  He then requested Manimekalai to use the bowl and wander through the world, feeding the poor and hungry, for  ‘There exists no more meritorious act towards gods or men, than to assuage the pangs of hunger.’

There are  many stories of other people too in this text, connected in some way with the main narrative. Manimekalai  went from city to  city feeding the poor. She was captured and imprisoned by the queen, but released when the queen understood the girl’s  own pure nature.

After further adventures, Manimekalai reached the city of Vanji. Disguised as  a man she debated with  the teachers of various sects and religions. After discussions , she understood the major religions and philosophies prevalent at the time, and felt that none  of them provided the right solution to life.

Aravana Adigal then began to teach her the truths of Buddhism. He explained to her how and why the first Buddha, who was already a being of light, incarnated on earth, and the need for  understanding the four truths regarding suffering, and the means of freeing oneself from suffering through freedom from desire and through detachment, and  by love towards all beings. Manimekalai  became a follower of the Buddhist dharma, lived in a monastery, and continued to perform acts of charity.

Commenting on this text, the scholar Paula Richman says  ‘In Manimekalai Cattanar undercuts, reverses and extends conventional ideas about ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ behaviour to give his account of a woman seeking to achieve the ultimate state beyond gender distinctions.’

Archaeology and garbology

 

Archaeologists are trained to explore and excavate ancient sites. Some sites have monuments that can be seen above ground, but the older the site, the less you will see on the surface. Over time, buildings crumble and collapse, wind and rain add to the destruction, and finally what one will see today is what looks like an earthen mound. Any such mound on flat ground is probably an ancient site. Archaeologists may explore such a mound, digging a vertical trench, carefully removing layer after layer of bricks, pottery and other artefacts, and then analysing their nature and period of time through various scientific methods. Alternatively, they may conduct a horizontal excavation across the whole mound, removing everything layer by layer, labelling and storing it for further analysis. This is when they also come across pits of garbage, known as ‘middens’ which reveal so much about the lifestyles of the past. Of course, human garbage reveals an equal amount about present lifestyles, and studying our garbage is one of the ways in which archaeologists of the future will try to understand our way of life. Garbology is the term used for the science of studying garbage and its disposal, both in the past, and in the present.

 

Right from the time people made stone tools, garbage began to pile up--in those days it consisted of discarded tools and flakes. Later, people discarded seeds, plants, shells, animal bones and pottery, among other things,  all of which can be used to analyse the past. Richard H. Meadow, an anthropologist and zooarchaeologist [specialised in the study of animal remains from archaeological sites] and the excavator of several sites including Harappa, pointed out that: ‘Much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash, if trash is defined as the products of human consumption’.  Early dumping grounds, he explained, tell us about ancient civilisations, including what they ate and wore, and how they disposed of their waste. 

 

A particular kind of garbage pit or midden is a shell midden, also known as a kitchen midden. These middens consist of heaps of shells of clams, oysters, mussels and other shellfish, which were discarded after the fish were eaten. One of the earliest shell-middens was found at the Blombos Cave in South Africa, dating to 140,000 years ago. Analysing these shells help us to understand not only what they ate, but how. Were the fish raw or cooked? If an estimate of population could be made, how much did they eat per person? What time of the year were these creatures eaten? Such painstaking analysis leads to an understanding of the past.

 

A similar analysis can be made in the present. Today the disposal of garbage creates huge problems across the world. A recent article in Newsweek suggests that garbage disposal and protests against garbage dumps pose more of a problem to Putin in Russia than pro-democracy activism. 

 

William Rathje [1945-2012], an archaeologist and anthropologist,  has been called ‘the father of Garbology’. In a pioneering effort, when he was  professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Arizona, he started the Tucson Garbage Project in 1973, which developed into a many-pronged study, looking at nutrition, consumerism, diet, recycling and garbage disposal.  Several schools in the US now have similar projects, which is helping to reduce rampant consumerism. Along with Cullen Murphy, Rathje  also wrote a book called Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Though more about garbage in modern times, the book states: ‘Garbage is among humanity’s most prodigious physical legacies to those who have yet to be born.’ 

 

In fact Garbology, along with capitalism and consumerism, has contributed to the ‘freegan movement’, which, I think, is yet to reach India. Freegans are those who, in theory, are committed to not buying anything at all. Freeganism is against the capitalist consumerist society, and aims to conserve water, reuse goods, grow their own food, use wild plants, and even rummage in dumping grounds and garbage bins for food and other items. They also have a philosophy that shows how one can live with minimum consumption, and with scarcely leaving a mark on the planet. 

 

Ten thousand years ago: Was life so very different?

 

Today we live in a digital age with instant communication across the world. Yet some essentials of the way we live date back to very early times. Even 10,000 years ago people must have got up in the morning, had a wash, eaten a meal, and then done some kind of work, before eating and sleeping once again. By that time they made simple houses, used fire for cooking, wore clothes and shoes, created art and played music, and buried or cremated their dead with reverence and care. Things were not the same all over the world, but even without the superior communication of today, something that developed in one area soon spread to other regions.

Along with ways of living, humans too were evolving, with modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, coming into existence around 250,000 -100,000 years ago. These humans gradually occupied the whole world. They learnt to speak even before this evolution, possibly even one million years ago, as seen in an earlier article.

Here we will look at some of the other early activities. As for food,  animals were killed and eaten, but the diet included a number of plants. From around 25,000 BCE, people not only ate wild plants, but began to water them, remove weeds, and harvest them. Animals began to be domesticated from before 10,000 BCE.

Fire may have been first used for cooking around 1.5 million years ago. Burnt animal bones of this time have been found at Swartkrans, Africa. From 44,000 BCE there is evidence of a cooked meal of meat being eaten at Abric Romani in Spain.

Clothing too was worn from an early date. At first the early people were covered with fur like animals, then most of it dropped off. In cold areas  they must have  worn some kind of clothes, perhaps at first made from animal skins.  Scientists have found evidence that people wore clothes from at least around 1,70,000 years ago. Amazingly, scientists discovered this by studying the DNA of lice! Clothing lice diverged from head lice around that date, and clothing lice could only exist when people wore clothes. And there is evidence of shoes being worn 70,000 years ago.

Though many lived in caves and natural shelters, complex houses were made in eastern Europe and Russia from mammoth bones, as early as 25,000 BCE. There were stone floors, mammoth bones for tent like walls, and a covering of skin. Some houses were quite large. At Timonoska on the river Desna, there were houses with log roofs, and lamps made from soft stone.

As for art, there is possible evidence of an early carving of a woman on a stone pebble, from the site of Berekhat Ram in Israel. It is about 250,000 years old. The pebble itself is naturally shaped like a

woman and some incised lines have been added. It may have been the earliest sculpture. There are other possible instances of early art. The Deipkloof rock shelter in South Africa has ostrich

shells carved with designs dating to 60,000 years ago. Then at Blombos Cave, located near Cape Town, South Africa, occupied by people between 1,40,000 and 70,000 years ago, there is evidence

of two types of paint, red and yellow ochre, being made and used. From 50,000 BCE onwards, beautiful cave paintings were made at many different places in Europe, Asia and Australia. The Chauvet Cave in France, near the Ardeche river has hundreds of paintings of animals dating back to 30,000 BCE. Horses, deer, mammoths, owls and many more animals are depicted. In the clay forming the floor of the cave, a footprint of a child is preserved over all these years. On the walls there are hand prints. In India, some of the cave paintings at the site of Bhimbetka, belong to an early date.

Music too, had an early origin. Some scholars feel flint pieces of the Stone Age could have been used to create various sounds. Bone flutes have been found in Germany dating to 40,000 years ago, and in Slovenia, perhaps even earlier.

People began to bury the dead, and to decorate the graves in some way. For instance, at Teshik Tash in present Uzbekistan, a nine or ten year old boy was buried, and horns of wild goats were placed around the grave, perhaps for his protection in the next world. The grave is dated between 50,000-25,000 years ago.

Thus though times have changed, many of the basic aspects of life are still the same.

Language and the handaxe

 

How do you make a handaxe? And what relationship does a handaxe have with language? The Stone Age handaxe had a broad base and ended in a point, and this  point as well as the sides, were sharp, and could be used for cutting or chopping.  It was quite a complicated tool, made of flint or some other stone, with facets that provided a firm grip. Handaxes have been found in Africa dating back to 1.6 million years ago, and by one million years ago had spread to Europe and Asia. The complex nature of this Stone Age tool have led scientists and anthropologists to suggest that it was linked with the development of language. Though no one really knows when and how humans began to speak, and when they moved from making animal-like sounds to speaking words and full sentences, it may have been around the time they made the handaxe. Brain scans of those making such tools today  show that the same part of the brain is used in speaking and in making a tool like this. ‘Tool making and language evolved together’, says Aldo Faisal, a neuroscientist, based on several scientific studies. Others believe that language emerged with modern Homo sapiens, perhaps 200,000 years ago or a little later.

In this context,  many other questions can be raised. Where did language develop? Was there more than one area of development? How did different languages grow? How did they change, develop, and reach the various continents of the world? 

The Italian linguist Mario Alinei and put forward the Palaeolithic continuity theory (PCT) in a two-volume work in Italian, published in 1996 and 2000. Alinei places language development  before that of modern humans, and believes that language diffusion took place along with the earliest migrations of Homo sapiens from Africa or, at the latest, during the late or upper Palaeolithic period. After reaching Europe, there was initially a very slow rate of change but, by the end of the Ice Age, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Slavic and Baltic languages had developed. During the Neolithic period, language began to change at a faster pace. This theory finds some support among linguists and archaeologists, and somewhat corresponds with the theory of language evolving along with complex tools such as the handaxe.

Yet both linguists and archaeologists date certain language groups, such as Indo-European,  much later. Celtic, Italic and Germanic languages, along with several others including Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit and most  north Indian languages,  belong  to the large group of Indo-European languages. The theory of this language group  owes its origin to William Jones (18th century), one of the first to discover the similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin. Jones, who came to India in 1783 and became a judge of the Calcutta High Court, knew several languages including English, Persian, Latin, Greek, Gothic (an old form of German), and Welsh. In India, he began to study Sanskrit, to better understand local and customary laws. In 1786, he put forward his views, laying the base for further study. He said: ‘The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure: more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists.’ He stated that Persian, Celtic and Gothic probably also belonged to the same family of languages.

Jones provided the hints that later led to the theory  of Indo-European languages, the  term being first used by an English scholar Thomas Young in 1813, which since then became the standard term for all these related languages. These languages are spread across Asia and Europe, and are today spoken by about 3 billion people, more than any other language group. In addition, they include some extinct languages.

Among these languages, was there one original language? How did the different languages emerge and spread, was it through migration, or through the spread of agriculture as some archaeologists have suggested? And what was the date of the original Indo-European language? This original language has been termed Proto-Indo European (PIE) and about 1500 words reconstructed in it. Dates provided for it include those between 7000 -5000 BCE, with other languages diverging from this. PIE is thought to originate somewhere in Anatolia or in the Caspian Steppes, though many other homelands including India have been suggested. Apart from the fact that dates for the spread and divergence of these languages are  variable,  there are some archaeologists and linguists who feel there was no language such as PIE, and that in any case the date and divergence of languages is placed far too late. (Those interested in  the arguments and counter arguments can read them in my book on the Vedas.)

Recently, a date of origin of 4500-4000 BCE has been provided for Dravidian languages, that is, somewhat similar to dates for Indo European languages.

So what is the link between the handaxe, early language developments, and the evolution of language groups such as Indo-European and Dravidian? Is there a link at all? A complete theory is yet to be worked out.