Need for maritime heritage complexes in all coastal States

‘’ Flowing waters have their truth and untruths. In the great flow of waters, new shores are formed. This is the rhythm of nature where new shores are formed and old ones vanish. When maps are tempered by water, new shores break out, new pieces of land new contours and new settlements are born “ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

? Excerpts from the book ‘’Saga of MUZIRIS’’

? #History is akin to the flow of the waters; it traverses its path. We only look back and assume, the contours of evidence left by those flow of events. Somewhere before or maybe a few decades after the Christian era, Greek vessels set sail to coastal India taking advantage of the monsoonal winds that flow towards the southern coast. A secret, hitherto held by the Arabs but revealed to the Greeks by Hippalus. (Hippalus did not discover the monsoon winds as claimed by many Western literature. He just got hold of an Arab Secret) Monsoonal winds helped the masted vessels flow fast. As a result, hordes of high-mast wooden ships with multiple oars flowed with the wind with gold on board searching for the black gold and ivory traded by southern kingdoms.

On one of those vessels traveled an unknown sailor who wrote about the circumnavigation of the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, which was then called the?Erythrean?Sea. His work was later known as the ‘’Periplus of Erythrean Sea?and it described ports and sea routes starting from?Berenike?(Egypt) to?Taprobane?(Sri Lanka), He wrote about the markets of?Damirica?(konkan) and after reaching the kingdom of?Tyndis?the land ruled by the?Cerobothra?(Cheras) they berthed at a riverine port called Muziris beyond which is?Colchi?(Cochin) and Komori (Kanyakumari).?

During the same period Pliny, the elder was writing his Natural History at Rome lamenting at the women at Rome for their desire for muslin from #India and the consequent flow of Roman gold to India. He too wrote about a riverine port called Muziris. Decades later perhaps even a century ago, Claudius Ptolemy was writing “Geography” of the region vividly mentioning the ports, kingdoms, and markets of Southern India and mentioning a Port called Muziris. Long before that Megasthenes, the great ambassador in the court of Chandragupta Maurya wrote about an emporium of trade ruled by the?charmae?(read chera) inferred as? Muziris. But before all that Sugreeva and his team are said to have passed a town called Murachipattanam on their journey to Lanka in search of Sita (Ramayana). Soon later by the beginning of the Christian era, the travelling minstrels of the Sangam times were singing melodies on the beautiful ships of?yavanas?(Greeks )embarking at?muciri?(Muziris), coming with gold and going away with pepper.

Sitting in front of the Marthoma Church at?Azhikode?near my hometown of?Kodungalore?in the?Thrisoor?District of Kerala? ( St Thomas is believed to have arrived here which led to the emergence of Christianity in Kerala ) and looking at the fishermen and women in the vicinity cleaning their woven fishing nets in their hamlets, I was imagining about merchants and sailors unloading gold sacks and loading sacks of pepper into roman ships while waiting for the retreating monsoonal winds to sail back. Not that far away from my location at an estuary called?Pattanam?archaeologists from the Kerala Historical Society were digging hard in search of a port from a bygone era remnant of which they think lies somewhere beneath. Where was this port exactly?

The anecdote of the Muziris saga was first documented in a historical context by none other than Nilkanda Shastri in his magnum opus ‘’?History of South India"?where Muziris was identified as a port in the Chera kingdom which traded with the Western world. Cheras had their capital in?Mahodayapuram?or present-day?Kodungalore?during a period named the Sangam period, referring to a time when the then eminent Tamil?scholars assembled and prepared their choicest literature which was rendered like anthologies.?The trinity of the Sangam period were the kingdoms of? Chera, Chola, and Pandyas who ruled -both with matrimonial alliances and with mutual wars- in an area south of the Krishna River. Commerce in these kingdoms depended on fishing and sea-borne trade and thrived over what we today call a Blue Ocean Economy. Merchandise was carted through the Palghat pass of the Western Ghats to?Muziris?port in?Malanadu?(Kerala) for onward shipments, including ivory, rice, and woodwork. Spices abundant on the hill slopes prominent among them being the black pepper was the most demanded due to its culinary and curative use. ?As barter for this ?black gold, the yellow metal flowed ?into the coffers of merchants and kings?

All prominent historians in Kerala like Shri K P Padmanabha Menon, Rajan Gurukal, MGS Narayanan, and KM Panikker to name a few, have all written about the genesis of this port in the annals of Kerala’s ancient maritime history with consensus about the location of the port being somewhere near the present?Kodungalore?where the?Periyar?River flows into the Arabian Sea. There is also folklore in Kodungalore about a tsunami or flood that destroyed the city and its trade center sometime in the 13th century. However, excavations have only revealed materials like potteries from the 13th?century in addition to a? Portuguese trade Centre. Kerala Historical Society through the?Pattanam archaeological research project?is excavating the?Pattanam?area south of the present?kodungalore?for clues on where the port was. This has also not prevented authorities from planning for the Musiris heritage project with the firm assumption that the port is indeed in and around?Kodungalore

The prime hypothesis is that Musiris is indeed at the present?Kodungalore,?historians both amateurs and professionals did come up with alternate locations as well. As per SW Hunter, the Musiris could be anywhere from the current port of Goa to areas in central Kerala. Though a wild assumption, some historians have claimed that Muziris is the present Old Mangalore Port. Citing the unknown sailor’s account called the?’Periplus of Erythrean Sea?about the location Tyndis (northern Kerala) they argue that Muziris is Mangalore. Some historians and academicians argue that the port was never on the western coast but on the eastern sea near the Kaveri River. However, a document discovered in 1985 called?Muziris papyrus?something like today's charter party agreement, proves beyond doubt that the place was factually on the western coast only.

As we ponder the enigma of where and how we lost MUZIRIS, oceanographic archaeology might provide an answer. However, what matters is how much we cherish and preserve our maritime History. When the National Maritime Heritage complex comes up in Lothal celebrating the first known port of ?India, there is an urgent need for State Governments to set up similar facilities in all coastal states

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