Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

15

Pondicherry

We spoke of a wedge when India broke free of the land-mass Gondwanaland and joined the Eurasian mass. A glance at the map of the Deccan does give us an impression of a triangle, which tapers to a point at Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin). The point is the meeting ground of three seas. It is washed by the Bay of Bengal from the east, and by the Arabian Sea from the west; mingling with them is the Indian Ocean. Bordering the Arabian Sea are the Malabar and Konkan coasts. The western coast extends from the Cape almost in a straight line towards the north up to the Gulf of Khambat, where Mahi, Narmada and Tapti rivers end their overland journey. Along the Bay of Bengal is the Coromandel coast. It too stretches northwards, but less steeply, before curving to the north-east towards the delta of the Ganges.

Running parallel to the coasts are two mountain ranges: the Eastern and Western Ghats. The Western Ghats appear like a gigantic sea-wall, often rising in steps from the shoreline. In contrast the Eastern Ghats are broken, scattered, of much lower altitude; and also they recede from the coast, then strike south-westwards to meet the Western Ghats in the Nilgiris. The Deccan has a distinct slope towards the east. Most major rivers that rise

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on the crest of the Western Ghats course down to the Bay of Bengal, and not to the Arabian Sea.

From very ancient times, from the mouth of the Narmada to the mouth of the Ganges, there were well-known port towns studding the long coast lines of India. Among the ports on the Coromandel coast was one named 'Poduca' in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea} which is none other than Pondicherry. It must have been an important port of call, because Ptolemy the geographer (c.140 AD) also writes about it in his Geography, although he called it 'Poduka.' These names appear to have been derived from 'Puducheri.' When the Europeans came, they too called this port by various names. To the Portuguese it was 'Puducheira.' To the Danes, who came afterwards, it was 'Polesere.' Under the French, after several transformations and misspellings, it finally became 'Pondichery,' from which the English derivation, Pondicherry. That name stuck.

In the 1930s came G. Jouveau-Dubreuil as professor of History in the Colonial College at Pondicherry. Impassioned by the town's history, he carried out extensive research. Here are a few pluckings from him.²

¹Majumdar says that the anonymous author of this historical travelogue (c. 70-80 AD) was "an Egyptian Greek. A merchant in active trade, he personally voyaged to India in the second half of the first century AD. He has given a detailed account of his voyage," naming ports and the articles of "import and export in connection with each of them."

²The pluckings are taken from Revue Historique de I'État de Pondichery, 1955, where these articles were reprinted from Le Semeur between the years 1931 to 1939.

Let me add that this chapter on Pondicherry consists of pluckings also from R. C. Majumdar, Nilakanta Sastri and Yvonne Gaeblé (or Suvrata as Mother named her).

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He pored over old maps of India. One of which was drawn in 1635 by a Frenchman, Pierre Berthelot (born in Hon fleur, France, on 12.12.1600) when the Danes were in Pondicherry. And sure enough 'Polesere' was well marked at the right place. The map by Berthelot carried the names of only the most important ports.

The historian read old manuscripts and writings of travellers of yore. He corresponded with Professor K. A. Nilakanta Sastri of Madras University. He went to the spots to check the ground reality of his findings. He did find, at that, a large body of evidence proving that Pondicherry on the mouth of Gingee river, like Nagapattinam further down south on the estuary of Kaveri, had carried on a brisk trade with the Far-East since antiquity, and certainly during the Middle Ages. As we know, a profound Buddhist influence¹ had spread over the entire eastern coast of India from the Bay of Bengal to the island of Sri Lanka, spilling over to the east from the second century of the Christian era onwards. A substantial number of Chinese, Indochinese, Sumatrans, Siamese, Burmese, and so on, lived

' I must say that the Buddhist faith, an offspring of the Hindu faith, wasn't all that different from the parent body. When the new king of Cambodia was crowned on 22 July 1928 by Brahmin priests, the special correspondent of the Times sent the following despatch: "On the entry of the eight officiating Brahmin priests the King rose and seated himself on a low chair immediately in front of the throne-dais. The eight Brahmins approached and knelt around the Sovereign, representing the eight points of the compass. One after another they repeated the traditional prayer for the King's welfare, his Majesty turning his chair so as to face each priest as he spoke. During this ceremony the King, although a Buddhist, held in his hand the images of Vishnu and Siva, the 'Protectors of Cambodia'—a tradition of the old Vedic faith so deeply rooted in the country." (Modern Review, Nov. 1928.)

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in their settlements in the ports on the Coromandel coast. Remember how in the eleventh century, Buddhism had thrived under the Pal and Sen kings of Bengal? That was probably the final great era of Buddhist art and literature in India. Well, the 'foreign' Buddhists had also built their places of worship in the Hindu kingdoms, where there was great tolerance for other religions. Let us recall that there was no place in the Indian political system for religious oppression and intolerance. It was encoded in the Indian statecraft that though "the monarch might personally favour a particular sect or creed ... at the same time he was bound to respect and support in his public office all the recognized religions of the people with a measure of impartiality, a rule that explains the support extended by Buddhist and Brahmin emperors to both the rival religions." This freedom of religion became ingrained in the Indian people. Different religions lived side by side.

Persecuted peoples from other lands, like the Parsi, the Jew, or Syrian Christians, sought refuge on Indian shores. The world knew that Hindus had a taste for cultural diversity. Raja-raja Chola, encouraged Sri Mara Vijayottungavarman, the ruler of Sri Vijaya (Sumatra) to build a Buddhist vihara at Naga-pattinam. The monastery was called Chudamani vihara after the father of the ruler of Sri Vijaya. Wrote N. Sastri, "Sri Vijaya was the powerful maritime state which ruled the Malayan peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and the neighbouring islands, and controlled the sea routes from India to China." There was considerable trade between China and India.¹

¹ "A Chola embassy of 72 merchants reached China in 1077 and received

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Times changed. Kings changed. Rajaraja's great-grandson, Kulottunga I (1070-1122), who started the Chalukya-Chola dynasty, became king. He was one of the great kings of eastern Deccan, and ruled from Tanjore. Commerce with Sri Vijaya was very active. During the reign of Rajaraja, the ruler of Sri Vijaya built a Buddhist vihara at Nagapattinam. It was popularly known as the 'Chinese temple.' At the request of his contemporary king of Sri Vijaya, Kulottunga I granted some privileges to the vihara and regularized its boundaries. On that occasion a charter was engraved on a copper plate marking those boundaries. The plate is in Holland, at the Museum of Leyde University. Jouveau-Dubreuil called the Chinese temple 'Chinese Pagoda.' It was destroyed by the Jesuits in the nineteenth century.

Could Pondicherry be outdone? No, no. It had its own Far-Eastern temple: 'Burmese Pagoda.' When the eighteenth-century astronomer Le Gentil stayed in Pondicherry from 1761 to 1769, he found a 'singular' statue: "The Tamils assured me that it was 'Baouth' [Buddha], and that the Chinese came to the Coromandel coast for trading at the time of 'Baouth.' " By cross-checking, Jouveau-Dubreuil found out that the Buddhist temple was situated on the east bank of the Ariankuppam river, at the cremation ground. The statue, he says, is of Buddha at the moment of his Enlightenment: a Buddhistic robe covers his torso, his right shoulder is bare and, draped over the left arm the cloth hangs over the left side of the breast where it

'81,800 strings of copper cash, that is, about as many dollars in return for the articles of tribute comprising glassware, camphor, brocades, rhinoceros horns, ivory, incense, rose water, putchuck, asafoetida, borax, cloves, etc' " (see A History of South India, p. 191).

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118 / Mirra in South India

forms a very visible fold. This 'Birman Kovil' or 'Burmese Pagoda,' asserts Jouveau-Dubreuil, "was assuredly extremely ancient; it was founded and maintained by Buddhists from Burma, Siam, and Sumatra."

In those bygone days Pondicherry covered a vaster area than the present town. Archaeological excavations carried out at Arikamedu, at the mouth of the Ariankuppam river, which lies two to three kilometres to the south of Pondicherry, have brought up not only potsherds bearing epigraphs, terracottas, but also a megalithic tomb and a trove of gold ornaments, including a ring with the seal of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar, besides quantities of Roman coins in silver and gold. As Roman commerce was officially authorized at Pondicherry, the Romans owned here a 'loge,' and minted their coins to pay wages to the Indian workers. Majumdar directs our attention to the rich treasure of earthenware and terracotta figures in addition to other finds that were revealed by excavations at Arikamedu. "These finds come from what was once a considerable town that comprised, among many other things, a warehouse, a textile manufactory and at least several bead-making establishments." He assigns these wares to the centuries immediately preceding and succeeding the Christian era. Marco Polo, who voyaged in these parts in 1293, adds his interesting bits of information. Pearl-fishing was common, he says, and diamond was found in Masulipattam, which lay more to the north of Pondicherry. Let me now tell you an anecdote. Just after the Second World War, in 1945 or 46, when the present Harpagon Workshop was being dug to lay foundations for a building, a hoard of garnet was found there. When Sri Aurobindo was

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shown some which were red as rubies (some others were bluish-violet), he remarked that 'perhaps if they dug still further, they might get diamond!'¹

Evidence has surfaced that at Bah our commune, twenty kilometres south of Pondicherry, a Sanskrit College was functioning in the seventh century AD during the reign of the Pallavas, who also built a Shiva temple at the same time. These Dravidian kings were great builders. When the Cholas gained power in the eleventh century, apart from building other temples, they also took care to renovate the old Shiva temple. One of the best known of even earlier times was the Vedapurishwar temple,- where the lingam was swayambhu (self-born), and which had been worshipped by Rishi Agastya, according to tradition.

It is worth noting that the new rulers did not destroy temples erected by previous dynastic rulers, but rather renovated these, often enlarged them, and gifted land and village for the upkeep of the temples.³ Private individuals followed the example set by their king, and made endowments for free distribution

¹ When Golconde Guest House was being built, lignite was found along with the dug earth. When told about it, Sri Aurobindo said, "Perhaps it will be better to dig a coal mine instead of building Golconde!" In point of fact, there is a lignite mine in Neyveli, not very far from Pondicherry.

(We have Sri Aurobindo's remarks through the courtesy of my sister Suprabha, who got them from Lilou Patel.)

- The temple was in existence at least as far back as the second century AD, asserts Jouveau-Dubreuil.

⁵ "The Chalukya monarch Vikramaditya II (733-746 AD)," writes R. C. Majumdar, "then entered Kanchi, which he did not destroy, and donated heaps of gold to the Rajasimheswara temple and other shrines which had been built by Narasimhavarman II" (the Pallava monarch of seventh century).

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of food and medicine to the needy and the sick. The king was the leader of the armed forces, true; but he was also the head of State, the fountain of honour, and judge. These kings patronized all creeds. Although favouring their own particular religion, they never sought to impose it on all their subjects. No king prevented pilgrims passing through his territory from worshipping at the shrine of their choice; the devotees travelled freely through rival kingdoms. Even after a political revolution, the social stability was maintained "by express proclamations that all pre-existing rights of property and the charitable foundations would be respected," N. Sastri points out.

The government imposed taxes; but as Sastri declares, "the king, the nobles and the temples drew largely in various ways upon the products of the industry of the common people. But much of this wealth was returned to them in ways that advanced their common good." He adds admiringly, "It was a wonderful social harmony based not on equality of classes or individuals but on a readiness to give and take, a mutual goodwill that had its roots deep down at the foundations of communal life."

Each part of the community existed for the good of all. The society could turn its best energies to its higher development.

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