Archaeologists brace for debate on Tamil past

Radhika Giri

CHENNAI, Feb. 14: An ancient neolithic tool unearthed in April 2006 has once
again brought alive the raging debate on if Tamil Nadu was linked to the
Indus Valley civilisation.

Detractors and supporters are bracing themselves for a heated debate on the
first international symposium on Indus civilisation and Tamil language in
Chennai between 15 and 16 February. The symposium organised by the
department of archeology, government of Tamil Nadu with collaboration with
department of ancient history and archeology, University of Madras, is a
first of its kind to deal with an Indus civilisation find south of the
Vindhyas. About 50 papers from both national and international speakers have
been lined up for discussion. Dr Amarendra Nath, Director of Archeology from
Delhi, has been invited to chair the programme while Dr D Bhengra, Director,
Pre-History, Nagpur, from the Archeological Survey of India, will be among
those who would be discussing different thesis. On 7 April 2006, it was by
chance that two curiously shaped stone tools were discovered in the garden
of a school teacher at Sembiyan Kandiyur, a village in Nagapattinam
district. The stones with neatly polished surface, one of black granite and
the other slightly yellowish stone tool, took the school teacher, Mr V
Shanmuganathan, by surprise. With an intensive epigraphy drive (to collect
inscriptions on stone, metal and palm leaf) running in the state, he took
the objects to his curator friend working in the nearby Tranquebar Museum of
Archeology. He in turn turned it to the state department of archeology. For
those in the department, the find was curious for two reasons. They did not
expect a celt tool in the Tanjore belt. They did not expect a script on it.
The department admitted the tool but almost dismissed the marks on the black
granite, until the special commissioner of the state archeological
department, Mr TS Sridhar, attempted a match and found one emerging after he
took it to experts.

Epigraphists attached to the department, Dr S Rajagopal and Dr N Marxia
Gandhi, after confirming the suspicions referred it to Mr Iravadham
Mahadevan, a researcher on Indus scripts, who concurred with the view that
it was a Neolithic find with Harappan symbol etchings. The find got the
department excited as it was the first Neolithic tool discovery below the
Godavari region (south of Daimadbad, now Maharashtra) and it corroborated
with a 1970s concurrence among International Indus Valley researchers that
Indus Valley finds pointed to a link with earlier Dravidian culture. Further
references led to dating the tool to a period between late Neolithic and
pre-Iron age between 2000 BC and 1000 BC. “The granite must have been etched
with Iron. Iron age occurred in the Deccan region first,” says Dr Gandhi.

Mr Mahadevan read the four symbols etched as that of a couched person in a
sitting position, a concave vessel, a representation like a trident head and
a crescent with a bulge in the middle. The first three symbols approximated
to No. 48, No. 342 and No 367 of the Indus script. Mr Mahadevan read the
first two etchings to mean “Murugu” and “an.” The meaning of the other two
letters are not known.