Kumari Kandam: Interweaving Myth, Memory and Science in the History of a Submerged Tamil Land

Abstract

The idea of Kumari Kandam has travelled through several intellectual worlds: Tamil literary memory, colonial science, Puranic imagination, modern geology, and 20th-century identity politics. This study approaches the subject from an interdisciplinary angle, neither treating the lost-land tradition as a simple myth to be dismissed nor as a literal continent to be defended. Instead, it traces how different intellectual groups have interpreted and reshaped the idea over time. By placing Sangam references, medieval commentaries, and Puranic accounts alongside 19th-century theories of Lemuria, Theosophical writings and recent geological works on the microcontinent Mauritia, the paper shows how the narrative has shifted and been reused for varying cultural and political purposes. This broader frame helps explain why Kumari Kandam remains a persistent element of Tamil historical consciousness. The study also considers archaeological findings from sites such as Poompuhar, Mahabalipuram, and Dwarka, which show that large-scale coastal submergence is not unusual in the Indian Ocean world. Bringing these strands together offers a more grounded understanding of how memory, landscape, and identity intersect. In doing so, the paper provides a perspective rarely attempted in earlier scholarship and suggests that, given the patterns of coastal submergence in the region, there is meaningful scope for future excavations using marine archaeology, which may help clarify aspects of this longstanding historical question.