Ancient
factories and foreign trade
Buried treasure: what big business was like 2,300 years ago
T E Narasimhan / June 9, 2012, 0:04 IST
An archaeological dig at Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu
reveals what big business was like 2,300 years ago.
It is a long, tiring journey to Kodumanal, a tiny village in western
Tamil Nadu a place virtually unheard of until archaeologists
recently unearthed a 2,500-year-old industrial estate there.
The trip from Chennai to this inland village happens
in three stages: eight-hour bus ride to Erode (district headquarters),
two-hour bus ride to Kangeyam (small town in the textile district
of Tirupur), final bus ride to Kodumanal.
The last leg is the most interesting. At first the rickety bus
passes farmland and pretty bungalows, but then the surroundings
grow barren. There is only the occasional coconut tree. It is
hard to believe that this area once held a thriving town. Modern
Kodumanal has just around 1,000 people; to make a living they
breed cattle and work in the nearby textile town of Tirupur.
The chatty bus conductor asks, Sir, are you
from the archaeological department? When I shake my head,
he says, So many people from the archaeological department
come here these days that I assumed you were one of them.
At the archaeological site near Kodumanal, even
at 8 am the sun is merciless. Approaching the arid excavation
area, one hears the sounds of digging, and of instructions being
yelled to the scores of archaeology students busy on the site.
K Rajan, professor and head of the Department of History at Pondicherry
University, leads the team. Rajan is in his early 50s. He stands
in the heat talking to the students gathered around. Today is
the last day of this dig at Kodumanal.
Kodumanal, Rajan explains, was a manufacturing and trading centre
in the 4th century BCE. It is mentioned as such in the Sangam
literature of classical Tamil (circa 300 BCE-300 CE). The settlement,
which would have accommodated several thousand people in its heyday,
appears to have been abandoned after the 3rd century CE.
Archaeologists arrived in Kodumanal in 1961, when V N Srinivasa
Desikan of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) led the first
dig. In 1980 a second, trial excavation was carried out by the
Tamil Nadu State Archaeology Department. More digs were executed
in 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1990 by the Departments of Epigraphy and
Archaeology of Tamil University, with the Department of Ancient
History and Archaeology of Madras University, and the State Archaeology
Department. However, not much was found. Between 1985 and 1990
the archaeologists laid 49 trenches but collected only 170 inscribed
potsherds (pottery fragments).
In 2012 the pattern has broken, and Rajans team has struck
gold. Between April 21 and this week, they laid four trenches
and collected as many as 130 inscribed potsherds. Yathees Kumar
V P, 32, a PhD student of archaeology from Pondicherry University,
has worked at Kodumanal for two months. I have worked in
four different sites since 2005, he says. In those
areas, finding one script itself is a big thing, here in one site
we found 130. Kumar and another student have found two large
pots, one of which bears a Tamil-Brahmi inscription in tall letters
reading Samban Sumanan a name. The pot is 4
ft tall, says Kumar, and was used to store water. Nearly all the
newly unearthed inscriptions, in fact, are personal names; a few
also refer to the trade performed by the named individual.
The words on the pots are in Prakrit, a north Indian language
of the time. This tells us, says Rajan, that Kodumanal had cultural
and trade contacts with the north.
Hard, slow work led up to these exciting discoveries. Rajan has
been involved in excavating this site since 1984. The last excavation
was in 1990. For this years dig, the professor managed to
raise Rs 3.5 lakh from the ASI and the Central Institute of Classical
Tamil.
From the trenches have emerged fascinating and beautiful artefacts.
Among the more decorative items are semi-finished bangles and
bracelets made from beryl, a crystalline mineral. Some of these
stones are so pure that they are colourless. One find is a tiger-shaped
object made of copper, about 15 cm long (see image above). It
was studded with carnelians, sapphires and diamonds. Old quartz
stones and broken beads of sapphire, beryl, agate, carnelian,
amethyst, lapis lazuli, jasper, garnet, soapstone and quartz
are strewn across the village. In one memorable case, the archaeologists
found 2,220 carnelian beads in a single grave. This may be the
first instance of its kind in India, Rajan says.
There are sources of sapphire, beryl and quartz near Kodumanal,
but carnelian, agate and lapis lazuli came from distant sources
as far away as Gujarat, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The
ancient economy, too, was global.
The finds show that workshops for cutting and shaping precious
gems, for making semi-precious stone beads, and also, incidentally,
for shell-cutting, were present in Kodumanal more than 2,300 years
ago. But the workers technical skills did not begin and
end with gem-making. They also worked with iron and steel. In
fact, ancient sources of iron ore have been found in and around
Chennimalai hill, 15 km to the east. There was, the archaeologists
say, constant movement of foreign traders between Chennimalai,
where there are iron ore deposits, and Kodumanal where the ore
was processed and from where finished items were exported.
And in Kodumanal itself, Rajans team has found pieces of
a crucible furnace. Such furnaces can withstand heat up to 1,300
C, well over the melting point of cast iron. This find has been
confirmed, Rajan says, by Sharada Srinivasan of the Indian Institute
of Science in Bangalore, who has examined the crucible.
Kodumanal was one of the earliest wootz steel centres of the
world. Wootz steel, a form of carbon steel, was a prized, highly
durable speciality of ancient India, and much sought-after in
the West. In Roman literature there are references to the import
of steel from the Chera country, or south India. References to
wootz steel in Sangam literature indicate that Roman Egypt imported
its finest steel from here. The rust-free ancient iron pillar
still standing near the Qutb Minar in Delhi is said to be
made of iron from this region.
Kodumanal is not far from Tirupur, the textile hub of modern
India. Ancient Kodumanal also manufactured textiles. A number
of terracotta cotton spindles pierced through the centre with
an iron rod have been unearthed here. Incredibly, a well-preserved
piece of actual cotton has been found. It is believed to be 2,200
years old.
More proof of Kodumanals trade links comes in the form
of Roman coins, dug up in hoards as well as single pieces. The
town lay on a trade route frequented by Roman merchants, who came
to buy beryl, quartz and other stones. Goods to be exported to
the West were carried by road to the Chera port of Muziris (Pattinam)
on the west coast near Thrissur, and then went by ship. Goods
for South-east Asia were carried east to Karur, capital of the
Chera kingdom, then to Poompuhar near the mouth of the Kaveri,
and then overseas. Judging by the trade pattern, and as is suggested
by finds of beryl jewellery in eastern Europe and elsewhere, Kodumanals
exports went a long way.
Although Kodumanal is on the Noyyal, a tributary of the Kaveri,
the river was not used by shipping. The Noyyal is shallow, rocky
and has strong currents, so the trade route followed its banks.
Rajans findings suggest that only about half of the Kodumanal
site, which is about 100 acres in all, was inhabited in ancient
times. The other half is a huge burial ground. In the last three
months, the archaeologists have opened some 180 graves.
The number of graves is not so unusual, says Rajan, as the kinds
of graves. There are three types: pot, urn and chamber stone burials.
The last is for people of high status, and in these graves the
archaeologists have found gold and other items. A few of the big
tombs are surmounted by stone megaliths (though some 300 megalithic
tombs in all, of different grades, have been found in the region).
The archaeologists have also recovered three skeletons, two female
and one male.
One that may be typical is of a person buried with legs crossed,
a large stone under one knee and a gold ring in the hand. As Rajan
explains, this tells us about the dead persons profession.
It was jewellery workers who sat in this position with a stone
under a knee, to work the precious stones.
The cists, or chamber burials, come in three varieties depending
on orientation, the number of connected chambers and layout. The
cists are covered by individual capstones.
The number and variety of the tombs and graves tell us what the
rest of the site already makes clear: at its peak this was a prosperous
place, with many residents, whose pride in their work, which was
organised on an industrial scale, reflected the strong worldwide
demand for it.
This is the last day of the dig at Kodumanal. Work has been on
for three months, since April, performed by six PhD scholars,
numerous students and 40 local labourers. And yet it is as if
the archaeologists have merely scratched the surface. There is
still a large historical treasure trove, of material and insight
not bullion, waiting to be unearthed. According to Rajan it will
take another 10 years to complete the excavation.
Not only does this excavation bring to light the rich industrial
and cultural past of this region, and reveal to us an important
chapter in Indias economic history, it also offers the people
of Kodumanal a better future. Roads are being laid, drinking water
and electricity being provided. Youngsters from Kodumanal have
started going to school and college and some will have
been inspired to learn history.