MUZIRIS
PAST PERFECT, PRESENT CONTINUOUS
Tourism in Kerala has so far targeted
mainly beaches, forests and backwaters. Muziris Heritage Project will generate
cu among curiosity among travellers visiting Kerala, while conserving 3
millennia of heritage. Like a hidden jewel, the area known as Muziris, suddenly
sprang to fame with archaeological discoveries which connected the place to the
people and trade. It was famous for welcoming people from other religious
faiths, especially Christianity, Islam and Judaism and to this day, is a model
of religious harmony. Muziris is also unique as home to India’s first church,
first mosque and the oldest European monument. The heritage project is the
first of its kind in India and will be , when completed, a major
destination for cultural tourism .
MUZIRIS was where ancient mariners
anchored. When history was opening its eyes, it was there, verily flourishing,
3000 year ago. Epic Indian poets, Vyasa, Valmiki and Kalidasa, knew it.
Southern Sangam chroniclers wrote about it. So did early visitors from across
the seas, Pliny and Ptolemy.
Muziris was a port city, among the earliest
of its kind in the world. The city as an idea and reality, it would seem , grew
with Muzziris, which was Murachipattanam, Spice City , to ancient reporters,
Ramayana mentions Murachipattanam as a place Sugreeva;s sleuths scurried
through while looking for the abducted Sita. In his characteristic flight of
romance, Kalidasa mediates on Murachi’s pepper vine, cardamom and outlandish
damsels. In Sangam, literature, Muziris becomes Michiri and later Muyirikkode.
2 things struck that anonymous chronicler
of the first century who is knowns by his Guide to the Erythrean Sea:
prosperity and maritime prowess of Muziris. “ Muziris is a city at the height
of prosperity. , frequented as it is by ships. “ To Roman Emperor Vespasian’s
friend, Pliny .Muziris was the “nearest mart of India”, who’s sovereign was the
“Caeloobothras”.
THE CHERA CHIARASCURO
Braving the vagaries of time,Muziris was
witness to continual spells of compulsive power play, enacting a saga of
subjugation or resistance of triumph. What it was depends, naturally on which
angle you choose to view it from. Geophysical features of Muziris have
inexorably changed in the course of centuries but that does not detract from
the fact that this was the region where seekers of political power relentlessly
fought for supremacy. The Cheras were the earliest with Muziris as their
capital. They called Muziris Mahodayapuram
or Thiruvanchikkulam.
The Cheras were among the earliest
political powers in this part of India. From Muziris they ruled a kingdom whose
sway extended well over the east of the Sahya mountain ranges. Historians
divide their reign between 2 dynasties. The first Chera Empire flourished
before the Sangam era between 300 BC and 250 AD, while the second ruled from
800 and 1100 AD. Their capital, Mohodayapuram , city of great rise , came to
known later by its modern name.Kodungallur, more famous now for its goddess
shrine. The end of the Cheras was a cause, or consequence or both, of natural;
calamities, culminating in a flood in the fourteenth century, which threw into
disuse the great global harbor of what, were once Muziris.
If it was this tiny fruit, Murachi that
launched a thousand ships to Muziris in the early centuries, what brought
hordes of rapacious visitors from across the seas after the fall of the Cheras
was more than the enormous scope for trade. Indeed they entered as traders but
ended up as rulers, their colonies, bug or small, lasting for some 4 centuries.
Pejoratively, Muzuris may as well be said to have stood as India’s ready
gateway to colonialism. The chronicle of Kodungallur from early sixteeth
century has been convulsively influenced by the colonial enterprise of the
Portuguese, The Dutch and the British.
They waged wars with the rulers of the
region in a bid to expand their area of economic and political power even as
they had their mutual wars of supremacy. Their wars which ravaged the region
have inevitably left behind a trail of trauma, moats and forts and armouries.
So have their non-military pursuits left a vast memorabilia. They hark back to
a theatre of war that became a confluence of cultures.
EARTH’S SECRETS (PATTANAM EXCAVATION)
MANY WAYS, ONE COAL
Muziris was ever a hospitable place to
everyone. In keeping with the hoary Indian tradition of treating guests as
gods, invoking the hymn, atithi devi bhava, it received every guest with folded
arms, seldom with clenched fists. The gospel of Jesus was heard here no later
than it reached anywhere outside his native land. The second mosque, after the
first in the Prophet’s homeland, was raised in Muziris . That St Thomas landed
here in AD52 and the last Chera King had been converted to Islam. , is all
still an oral tradition, not burnished by historical evidence but it has become
part of popular faith. That faith sparkles in the shrines built by , or in
memory of , those holy men in Kodungallur.
Every world religion found their votaries
in Muziris. Whether they came as traders or turned into power peddlers. What is
loosely described as the God Gene was always a pre eminently assertive force.
The mundane and the metaphysical merged. Early Jews and Christians and Muslims
found their way to Muzuris where a ready reception awaited them. It also opened
spheres of influence for Jainism and Buddhism. True to the Hindu view of life
that the goal is one though the ways are many. Muziris left space for every
school of thought to bloom. That it let so many faiths strive for sway in an
atmosphere unsullied by competition or cussedness is a measure of the majesty
of Muziris, overwhelming the students of the anthropology of faith.
The certitudes of history give every place
a form base in time. They do so to Muziris,its story being long and chequered ,
yet remaining to be researched . More than history’s unambiguous assertions and
explanations. Muziris is at once enveloped and inspired by a plethora of mist
like myths. They defy grasp even as they seem well within reach; they dazzle us
by their weirdness, maybe by their glorious contradictions. A trip to the myths
of Muziris can be as invigorating as any journey of the mind.
In the distance of several centuries, these
shines, for instance, the memory of the Chera prince who became a Jain monk and
took the name of Ilango Adigal when he wrote the seminal Tamil work,
Silappatikaram. It may well be said to be the magnum opus of Muziris. His
brother, the emperor, Senguttuvan , built in Muziris what was to become in
later years a popular shrine with the wronged woman as the deity.
Muziris was the hub of history. History
does not end. Muziris was replete with mythology .Myths have no beginning.
Muziris Heritage Project seeks to represent
this unique human experience without end, without beginning either. It may
pointless to insist that Muziris was what now Kodungallur for that matter is.
Pattanam, where old artefacts have been excavated. For purposes of reconstruction
and representation of heritage, Muziris is currently taken as a 300 square
kilometer region encompassing 2 towns and 6 panchyats in Ernakulam and Thrissur
districts.
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