16 Facts About Kumari Kandam

Kumari Kandam is a mythical continent, believed to be lost with an ancient Tamil civilization, supposedly located south of present-day India in the Indian Ocean.

Words "Kumari Kandam" first appear in Kanda Puranam, a 15th-century Tamil version of the Skanda Purana, written by Kachiappa Sivacharyara.

Kumari Kandam further divided his kingdom into nine parts, and the part ruled by his daughter Kumari came to be known as Kumari Kandam after her.

Kumari Kandam claimed that the temple at Kanyakumari was established by those who survived the flood that submerged Kumari Kandam.

Kumari Kandam named this submerged land Lemuria, as the concept had its origins in his attempts to explain the presence of lemur-like primates on these three disconnected lands.

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Kumari Kandam suggested that the progenitors of the other races must have migrated from Lemuria to other places via South India.

Books discussing the Kumari Kandam theory were first included in the college curriculum of the present-day Tamil Nadu in 1908.

In 1991, R Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamil Nadu, claimed that the Kumari Kandam civilization flourished around 50,000 BCE, and the continent submerged around 16,000 BCE.

Kumari Kandam insisted that the Brahmin historians, being biased towards Sanskrit, had deliberately kept the knowledge of the Tamil's greatness hidden from the public.

Kumari Kandam proponents laid great emphasis on stating that the Kanyakumari city was a part of the original Kumari Kandam.

Sumanthi Ramaswamy notes that this "placemaking" of Kumari Kandam was frequently intended as a teaching tool, meant to inspire the modern Tamils to pursue excellence.

Kumari Kandam listed several rare musical instruments such as the thousand-stringed lute, which had been lost to the sea.

Since these works had been lost to the sea, the Kumari Kandam proponents insisted that no empirical proof could be provided for their claims.

In 1903, Suryanarayana Sastri suggested that Kumari Kandam extended from the present-day Kanyakumari in North to Kerguelen Islands in South, and from Madagascar in the West to Sunda Islands in the East.

Kumari Kandam is a mythical continent, and therefore, the attempts to mix this myth with Tamil history have attracted criticism since the late 19th century.

Kumari Kandam noted that these myths persisted in the minds of Tamil people despite modern education.