They told me that their survey had identified fairly extensive structural remains in the form of heavily eroded and scattered dressed sandstone blocks down to a depth of about 7 metres. At the same depth they had also located several curious circular cairns, some 10 metres in diameter, made up of rounded stones and some small upright stones. Nothing was seen deeper than 8 metres until the U-shaped structure and its neighbouring mounds suddenly appeared at 23 metres.
‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’ I asked.
Sundaresh and Gaur agreed that it was indeed odd since it suggested that the date of submergence of the U-shaped structure must be much earlier than the date of submergence of the structures inshore.
‘How much earlier?’
‘Maybe 8000 years earlier,’ said Gaur after a moment’s thought.
Position of various submerged structures off Poompuhur coast. Based on Rao et al. (1993).
‘So if the Kaveripumpattinam structures in 1–3 metres are 2000 years old then what you’re saying is that the U-shaped structure might be 10,000 years old?’
‘I’m saying it would have been submerged by the rising sea-level about 10,000 years ago – maybe even before that. But I think it must be some sort of natural outcrop.’
I was genuinely puzzled. ‘Everyone else who has dived on it seems convinced it’s man-made. Courses of masonry were seen on it. That’s in this report’ – I pointed at the Journal of Marine Archaeology – ‘which you co-authored by the way.’
Gaur laughed: ‘Yes, but I have my own view and the more I think about it the more I am convinced it must be natural.’
‘But why? What are your reasons?’
‘Because it is a huge structure and we know that there was no culture anywhere in India at that time capable of mobilizing the necessary resources and organizing the necessary labour to build something so big.’
‘That’s just classic old-school historical chauvinism,’ I complained. ‘It’s as though you’re saying, “We archaeologists know everything about the past and we won’t let a few contradictory facts get in our way.”’
‘It is a fact! We don’t know of any culture 10,000 years ago that could have built this structure.’
‘But maybe it was the work of a culture that you don’t know about yet. Maybe this U-shaped structure, whatever it is, is the first concrete evidence for the existence of that culture. Maybe if you look you’ll find even more structures, even further out, in deeper water.’
Sundaresh chipped in at this point that he did not agree with Gaur. In his opinion, he said, the U-shaped structure was not a natural outcrop: ‘It is definitely man-made. And I have seen a second structure, a mound, about 45 metres away at the same depth where there are perfect cut blocks scattered on the sea-bed …’
‘But what about the 10,000-year-old date?’
‘Maybe the structures are not that old at all. Maybe there has been some great land subsidence here that we do not know of, or erosion of the coast by the sea.’
It was obvious that the only way to find out, and to settle the mystery, was by doing more diving and by careful measurement, observation and excavation of the site. But the problem was that since 1993 no funding had been available for a further expedition.
‘So you have no plans to dive at Poompuhur in the coming year?’ I asked.
‘Rather you should say no budget,’ Kamlesh intervened dolefully. ‘If somebody will finance us to go – only then can we go.’
I bit the bullet. ‘So what would it take to finance your team to go back there and dive on the site with me later this year or early next year – a sort of special charter, so to speak? Is it even possible to do something like that within the NIO’s regulations?’
‘Now that the SRC already know of you it should be possible,’ said Kamlesh. ‘I don’t see why not.’
He spent the next three minutes doing calculations on the back of a napkin and finally quoted me a sum equivalent to the gross national product of a small European country.
I gulped but steadied my nerves. It was going to be a long negotiation.
10 / The Mystery of the Red Hill
The ground near it is not at all touched by the four oceans that become agitated at the close of the Yuga and that have the extremities of the worlds submerged in them … When the annihilation of all living beings takes place, when all created things are reabsorbed … all the future seeds are certainly deposited there … All the lores, arts, wealth of scriptures, and the Vedas are truthfully well-arranged there … Brahmanas who resort to the foot of that mountain are called by me after the deluge and I make them study the Vedas and make collections thereof …
Skanda Purana
February 2000, south India
Since 5 a.m., Santha and I had been climbing the winding track towards the rocky 800 metre summit of Arunachela, the sacred mountain of Tamil Nadu. It was now just after 6 a.m. and dawn had not yet broken. Except for the sound of our footfalls and distant cockcrows, everything was silent, everything still. Then we rounded a corner and the streetlights of Tiruvannamalai, the burgeoning town that clusters at the foot of the mountain, came suddenly into view beneath us. In its midst, due east of us, there lay a huge geometrical pool of deep darkness and shadow, like a giant doorway to another world. This place, where no lights yet burned, marked the precincts of Arunacheleswar, one of the five most important temples of Siva in all of India.1 We found a ledge of rock to sit on and waited for the sun to rise …
After being drawn in by the charisma and magnetism of the ‘proto-Siva’ figure on the Mohenjodaro seal I began to realize that Siva is everywhere in India. Even in Dwarka, with its all-pervasive cult of Krishna, there is also a beautiful Siva temple. Yet the devotees of the yogic god are most numerous and most demonstrative in the south, amongst the Dravidian-speaking peoples of Tamil Nadu, and Tiruvannamalai is one of the true centres of his cult.
Very little in Hinduism is straightforward or exactly what it seems: identities change and merge, contradictions abound, one thing stands for another, gods may manifest in different ways at the same time, ambiguity is everywhere. All this is there in the ancient story of Siva’s great temple at Arunachela:
The Supreme Being, the Ocean of Grace, Lord Siva once had a desire – ‘Let me become many.’ In accordance with this desire, Brahma and Vishnu came into existence spontaneously. They were delegated the duty of creating the worlds and protecting them. However, instead of merely carrying out the duty ordained by the Lord, they were caught up in an argument out of egoism which resulted in a major conflict. Seeing the terrible rage they had fallen into while battling with each other, the Lord of Compassion deemed it fit to reveal Himself in a form that would put an end to their fighting.2
To cut a long story short, Siva revealed himself on the spot where Arunachela now stands in the form of a limitless column of blazing light and scorching fire piercing the sky and pervading the universe. On seeing this dazzling and fearsome vision Brahma and Vishnu were not humbled but entered into a new competition to discover ‘either the beginning or the end’ of the column.3 Only when both had proved themselves incapable of doing so did Siva at last emerge from the effulgence.4
There are a few other twists and turns in the story, but the upshot is that Siva forgives Brahma and Vishnu for their contentions, telling them: ‘Carry on vigilantly with your work of creation and sustenance without forgetting me.’5 He then announces that the effulgent column will remain eternally manifest on this spot in the form of a mountain of fire:
My Effulgent form will shine here forever as eternal, immutable Arunachela. Oceans will not submerge it even at the time of the great Deluge. The winds will not shake it and the world-destroying fire will not burn it.
On hearing these words Brahma and Vishnu humbly bowed down to Siva and prayed: ‘Sustainer of the Universe! Let this Hill be the mainstay of the world as stated by you. But moderate its Effulgence, O Rudra, so that it becomes bearable, yet retains its boundless glory and remains a repo
sitory of everything auspicious.’6
In answer to Brahma and Vishnu’s prayers, ‘Siva reduced the blinding effulgence of his shining appearance in the column by transforming himself into this lacklustre mountain’7 – the ‘Red Hill’ of Arunachela, of which it is said: ‘Just as we identify ourselves with our body, Lord Siva identifies himself with this Hill where the reddish colour of the rocks suggests the primeval fire.’8 In addition Brahma and Vishnu beseeched Siva:
Although this Red Hill exists for the welfare of all, none could worship it without your grace … [Therefore] we request you also to take the form of a Lingam on the East side of the Mountain so that we may worship you …9
Again Shiva complied and a miraculous column of stone – the Sivalinga, or phallic symbol of Siva – appeared at the foot of the mountain on its eastern side. As a token of gratitude Brahma and Vishnu commanded Visvakarma, the architect of the gods, to erect a temple around it – the primordial temple of Arunacheleswar.
The temple that now stands on the site is of more recent origin. But believers maintain that it is the original natural stone lingam, ‘self-generated’ at the beginning of time, that still resides in the Holy of Holies and continues to be venerated by millions of pilgrims as the sign and the seal of Siva’s presence on earth.10
Austerities
We watched the sun come up in the south-east, illuminating first the nine pyramidal gopurams that surround the temple complex and then the deeper shadows in the interested rectangles of its plazas, ambulatories and shrines. As the town’s streetlights faded out in the rising glare of the day we could see that beyond the temple was a plain extending to the horizon in a great arc beneath us, its flatness broken here and there by isolated conical hills.
We resumed our climb of Arunachela. Although it is not particularly high, the way is steep and the winding path is long. After another hour had passed we still seemed to be nowhere near the summit, the sun was much hotter, and I was beginning to regret bringing only one bottle of water. Santha and I paused to take a swig each, looking down the way we had come to the distant towers of Arunacheleswar. Rising out of the morning haze the temple possessed an epic, otherworldly quality and it was not difficult to imagine it in the way that the ancient traditions describe it – as the work of the gods themselves, built at the dawn of the present cycle of time.
We started climbing again and when we next looked up we saw a lean but muscular young man, with the long tangled hair, ash-smeared forehead and orange loin-cloth of a sadhu, sitting cross-legged on a rock on the slope above us. He seemed oblivious to our presence but when Santha said good morning to him in Tamil his reply was friendly enough.
We passed him and continued to climb. When I glanced back a few moments later I saw that he was no longer seated on the rock but following immediately behind, barefooted and silent. Now, effortlessly, he increased his pace and overtook us and soon he had disappeared round a twist in the path ahead, shielded from us by piles of fallen boulders.
I guessed that he must be one of the devotees of Narayana Swami, the almost legendary figure I was hoping to encounter, who was reputed to have remained near the summit of Arunachela for the previous ten years, consuming no solid food of any kind and subsisting exclusively on small quantities of milk and tea brought to him by his acolytes.
By the performance of such austerities [tapas], which may range from relatively pleasant tasks like prolonged sexual intercourse without ejaculation to relatively unpleasant ones like holding one’s arm permanently above one’s head for decades, great yogis like Narayana Swami are believed to build up a special power of supernatural ‘heat’:
The basic transformation brought about by the Rishi in his performance of tapas is the production of heat in the body. The fire of his tapas becomes such that it is transformed into Fire itself, burning the worlds with his heat and illuminating them with the light that radiates from his body … Powers of becoming invisible, walking on water and flying through the air are among those most frequently said to be obtained by performing tapas-, while in the Yoga-sutras, a large number of such powers are listed as being attained through the practice of yoga – including, in addition to such ‘physical’ powers, various types of mental knowledge such as of previous existences and of the thoughts of others …11
The intense physical and mental discipline that tapas requires is also an essential step on the road to liberation from death. Thus, through their fearsome austerities, the Seven Rishis of the Vedas were said to have possessed
powers of rejuvenation, of curing illnesses, and of restoring the dead to life … One of the aims of the Rsis in performing tapas was to attain to the realm of the immortals and to obtain immortality – even as it is said that the gods and demons themselves performed tapas in order to escape death.12
John E. Mitchiner, the expert on the traditions of the Seven Rishis, admits that ‘such powers are indeed attributed to the Rsis throughout Indian literature’.13
But the question is why? Why the consistent association, throughout history, of great rishis with these extraordinary powers, and why do they always use the same means – yoga, austerity, meditation – in order to develop them? Is it all just imagination and fantasy on the part of the ancient storytellers? Or is it possible that something substantial lies behind these traditions?
I did not expect Narayana Swami to tell me the answer but I was nevertheless curious to set eyes on anyone who could live on tea and milk at the top of a mountain for ten years. I was also intrigued by the way that his presence there appeared to symbolize or bear out another tradition, recorded in a Tamil text known as the Arunachela Mahamatmyam (‘Glory of Arunachela’) to the effect that Siva himself always sits beneath a tree near the summit of the mountain in the guise of a siddha:
Siva abides here forever as a siddha known as Arunagiri Yogi, wearing only a loin-cloth and with matted locks and forehead shining with marks of vibhuti. [sacred ash].14
Because I had gradually acclimatized myself to such material over many months, I now had no difficulty in understanding how Siva could, at one and the same instant, be a phallic stone column in the Holy of Holies of the temple at the foot of the mountain, an ascetic meditating under a tree at the top of the mountain, and the mountain itself – for it is said that ‘unlike other mountains, which have become holy because the Lord dwells in them [e.g. Kailas in the Himalayas], Arunachela is Lord Siva himself’.15
Mainstay of the world
In the north Indian tradition of the flood we hear that Manu and the Seven Sages took refuge in the Himalayas and that it was from there that they spread out to re-establish agriculture and to repromulgate the Vedas in the ‘Land of the Seven Rivers’ between the Indus and the Ganges. For south India, a Tamil tradition recorded in the Skanda Purana assigns the same role – as a place of refuge from the flood and as a centre of subsequent teaching – to Arunachela, forever protected by Siva’s guarantee that ‘oceans will not submerge it even at the time of the great deluge’:16
The ground near it is not at all touched by the four oceans that become agitated at the close of the Yuga and that have the extremities of the worlds submerged in them … When the annihilation of all living beings takes place, when all created things are reabsorbed … all the future seeds are certainly deposited there … All the lores, arts, wealth of scriptures, and the Vedas are truthfully well-arranged there … Brahmanas who resort to the foot of that mountain are called by me after the deluge and I make them study the Vedas and make collections thereof … Sages of well-praised holy observances and rites, who abide within the caves of that mountain, shine with their matted hair. They have the refulgence of 100,000 suns and fires …17
The Puranas also tell us that the Seven Sages (normally associated with the post-diluvial preservation of the Vedas in the Himalayas) were amongst those who visited Arunachela.18 And it was undoubtedly the case, I reflected, as Santha and I continued our climb – passing now through a zone of cooling mist and then entering a dark
defile – that this red-granite mountain, which in fact belongs to one of the oldest exposed rock formations on earth,19 would never have been flooded during the post-glacial meltdown. Even during the worst events, the great tidal waves would not have reached this far inland or this high.
So Arunachela might well have been perceived as a solid and reliable ‘mainstay of the world’ in a time of rapidly and unpredictably rising sea-levels around the coasts of southern India. How interesting, therefore, that it was remembered, like the Himalayas in the distant north, as a place where ‘all the future seeds’ were deposited for the later benefit of mankind, and as a refuge for sages where the ancient wisdoms of the Vedas were kept safe and from whence they were later repromulgated.
Master of all wisdom
Siva is a god of many dimensions and he has been present in India – all of India – for a very long while. We’ve seen that his form as a meditating sadhu, lean, naked, powerful, the Lord of Yoga, goes back at the very least to the Pasupati seals of Indus-Sarasvati times, 4700 years ago. The same is true of his manifestation as a phallic cone or column of stone – many examples of which have been excavated in Indus-Sarasvati sites.20 He is also one of the primeval gods of the Rig Veda, where he is known as Rudra. It is in recognition of this ancestry that the names Siva and Rudra are used interchangeably (or jointly as ‘Rudra-Siva’) in many ancient Indian scriptures.21 And Rudra is addressed as follows in the Yajur Veda: ‘Thou art Siva [gracious, kind] by name.’22
Like Siva, Rudra is both terrifying and reassuring.23 He is said to have ‘two natures or two “names”: the one, cruel and wild (rudra), the other kind (siva) and tranquil (santa)’.24