Tsunami Relief

Religion and legends deal with disasters in South Asia

By Sudipta Sen, UC Davis Professor of History

Like most epic literature dealing with the myth of creation, the Hindu Puranas tell the story of a great flood during which the ancestor of humankind Manu was saved by an incarnation of God (Brahma the Lord of Creation, or in later accounts Vishnu, Lord of Preservation) in the form of a gigantic fish that towed his boat to safety. Earthquakes in popular religious belief are said to be caused by the stirring of Vasuki the snake on which the world still rests.

Whether these old mythic images of floods and earthquakes come to mind for Hindus who have lost their loved ones in the South-Eastern coast of India, in the states of Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh, it is hard to say. What is clear is that in the wake of the devastation that has left thousands dead and missing, people are praying that they can find the remains of friends and family so that they can be cremated properly, even if the wherewithal for the correct rituals is hard to come by.

The need to dispose of the dead quickly for fear of disease—sometimes before identification—is likely to make survivors feel even more helpless. Along with ancestors, divine entities, heavenly bodies and forces of nature are all offered obeisance and symbolic food in the last rites of all Hindus. Now the need for such offering seems to be even timelier and fitting among the devout in the wake of the tsunami disaster. Many would try to accept their loss as part of their individual and collective karma, and no doubt reconcile themselves to the eternal cycle of birth-death-rebirth.

In the midst of all this suffering, it is at least heartening to see how people are reaching out across religion and community to help bury and cremate the dead, clean up and rebuild. In the recent past, India has been in the news for religious intolerance and violence, but in the worst-affected areas of the southeastern coast, mosques, temples and churches now serve as shelters for all. They are centers for the distribution of relief and also have become makeshift hospitals.

The most ravaged ports

A historical perspective on India's Coromandel Coast is also illuminating. The two most ravaged port cities, besides the capital of the state of Tamilnadu, Chennai (Madras), are Nagapattinam and Cuddalore. Both cities are inhabited largely by speakers of the Tamil language. In Nagapattinam, the hardest-hit district on the mainland (with over 6,000 dead) half are Hindus, a third are Muslims and the rest are Christians.

Nagapattinam is a city more than 2,000 years old, famous for the remains of a very important Buddhist monastery (3rd century B.C.) and a Shiva temple. The port city was settled further by the Portuguese in the 16th century and the Dutch during the 17th century. These historic sites have been all affected. Nagapattinam's fishing industry is also a victim: not only have fishermen perished but many trawlers have been lost. Hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless.

Pilgrims killed while attending mass

In the nearby church of Vailankanni (Virgin Mary) several hundred pilgrims were killed as waves crashed on the beach, when more than 2,000 were attending mass. The church dates back to the 17th century. A Portuguese merchant ship sailing from Macao to Colombo was adrift in the Bay of Bengal was said to be miraculously saved by Mary the "Star of the Sea," and a shrine was dedicated to her. Now it is one of the largest Christian pilgrimages in India.

Cuddalore is another ancient sea port, site of one of the first settlements of the English East India Co., Fort. St. David. Here the Portuguese, French and the British vied for power. The fort has somehow escaped major damage. Coastal settlements in Nagercoil and Kanyakumari, where pilgrims have flocked for centuries, have also suffered terribly.

These parts of the Indian coastline are no strangers to ravages of the sea. There are records of a tidal wave washing away a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam in 900 A.D. A similar story of an enraged sea is also recorded in the Tamil Buddhist epic "Manimekhalai," engulfing Puhar (also known as Kaveripattinam) an ancient port-city located at the confluence of the Kaveri River and the Bay of Bengal that flourished under the Chola Dynasty. These were rulers of southern India between 9th and 13th centuries A.D.

Swallowed by the sea

The epic mentions that a Chola king had lost his son and in grief forgot to celebrate the annual Indra (king of the gods) Festival. This enraged Indra's emissary, the goddess Manimekhalai, who caused Puhar, the capital city, to be swallowed up by the sea. Marine archeology conducted in 2002 by members of the Scientific Exploration Society, the United Kingdom and underwater archeologists of the National Institute of Oceanography of India has revealed a submerged coastal city near present-day Poompuhar in Nagapattinam District. The site dates to possibly 5,000 years ago, but its link to the legendary Puhar remains subject to further research.

A "great flood" is also mentioned in popular Tamil mythology, occurring several hundred years B.C., which is said to have wiped out an entire corpus of ancient Tamil (Cankam) literature and submerging forever the land mass of Kumari Kandam.

Clearly all littoral cultures have narratives of destruction waged by the ocean. These stories may be compared to the living legends and myths of islanders. Among these, the worst affected perhaps are the Jarawas, Onge, Nicobarese, Shompen and other tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is fascinating to study stories of survival during floods in the older creation myths. In the Andamans, for instance, most tribes share a myth about how mythical beasts protected their fire from the rising waters of the ocean.

Professor Sen's scholarship focuses on the British Empire, late medieval and modern India, and the history of criminal law.