Kumari Kandam, the lost Tamil continent
Kumari Kandam is a lost continent south of India, said by Tamil revivalist writers from the 1900s to have been the cradle of an ancient Tamil civilisation drowned by the sea.
1903 CE · 6.50, 77.54 · status: claim
The account
The idea joined 19th-century European speculation about 'Lemuria' with medieval Tamil commentaries telling how the Pandyan kings lost land to the sea, and how the first two Tamil literary academies (sangams) stood there. V. G. Suryanarayana Sastri used the name 'Kumari Nadu' in 1903, and later writers expanded it into a vast continent. It became part of 20th-century Tamil cultural politics and school teaching. The pin is in the ocean south of Kanyakumari.
The sceptical view
Plate tectonics removed the geological basis of Lemuria; the coast has changed with sea level, but no continent sank.
Connections in the atlas
- Sclater proposes Lemuria
- Nan Madol and the 'continent of Mu'
- Underwater Dwarka
- The tsunami and the Seven Pagodas