The term Kumari Kandam (“Kumari continent”) was first used to describe Lemuria in the 1930s. Suryanarayana Sastri first used the term “Kumarinatu” (or “Kumari Nadu”, meaning “Kumari territory”) in his work Tamil Mozhiyin Varalaru (History of the Tamil language). By the early 1900s, they started using Tamil names for the continent, to support their depiction of Lemuria as an ancient Tamil civilization. When the Tamil writers were introduced to the concept of Lemuria in the 1890s, they came up with the Tamilized versions of the continent’s name (e.g. They claimed Kumari Kandam as the cradle of civilisation to prove the antiquity of the Tamil language and culture. According to them, Kumari Kandam was the place where the first two Tamil literary academies ( sangams) were organised during the Pandyan reign. Although the Lemuria theory was later rendered obsolete by the continental drift ( plate tectonics) theory, the concept remained popular among Tamil revivalists of the 20th century.
In the 20th century, the Tamil writers started using the name Kumari Kandam to describe this submerged continent. According to these writers, an ancient Tamil civilisation existed on Lemuria, before it was lost to the sea in a catastrophe. A section of Tamil revivalists adapted this theory, connecting it to the Pandyan legends of lands lost to the ocean, as described in ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literature.
In the 19th century, some European and American scholars speculated the existence of a submerged continent called Lemuria to explain geological and other similarities between Africa, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Madagascar. Alternative names and spellings include Kumarikkandam and Kumari Nadu. In Tamil mythology, 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.
The links between Tamil words and cultural artefacts found in diverse places such as South East Asia, the Mayan civilisation in central America and Madagascar in Africa have had people wondering.
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