CHENNAI: Houston-based Tamil scholar Naa Ganesan has sought to draw a link between the Indus Valley civilisation and ancient Tamil culture by drawing attention to the use of the crocodile as a symbol in both regions.
Ganesan’s theory focuses on the crocodile deity in Indus, post-Harappan and Megalithic periods. “If you take a look at the seals on Indus Valley coins, you see crocodiles on many of them. Unfortunately, many historians overlooked it,” said Ganesan, who is working on a book, Forgotten Religion of Crocodile (Makara Vidangar) and Proto-Durga as seen in Harappan and Post-Harappan Art.
There are strong Dravidian influences in the Indus Valley civilisation, according to Ganesan. “Makara month is the ‘thai’ month in Tamil. Makara comes from mokara due to the voracious eating habits of crocodiles. Even now, in Sind and Gujarat regions, the crocodile is worshipped as Mogara Dev,” he said. The Tamil Brahmi inscription at Tirupparangundram has the words ‘muu naakra-muu cacti’ (the divine couple of crocodile and mother-goddess), he said. “The word, ‘naakra’ means crocodile in Sanskrit. It comes from ‘nakar’, the name for the Gangetic crocodile,” he said.
He said the ‘high-walk’ crocodile seal on Indus Valley civilisation coins depicts the mugger crocodile from the southern region. “Nakar (or gharial) lives in large rivers such as Indus, Ganges and Krishna. Its legs are weak, and hence it cannot stand. What you see on the Indus seals is the makara or mugger crocodile,” said Ganesan, adding that the early Pandya coins issued by Peruvazhuti show the makara crocodile.
The crocodile couple seen on an Adichanallur burial urn from 500 BC, along with the battle-axe bearing great god Mazhuvaal Nediyon in Sangam poetry indicate that the crocodile cult existed in the Bronze age’s Indus Valley and Iron Age Tamil Nadu until the early Sangam period. But what happened to the cult? “When religions like Buddhism and Jainism started questioning beliefs about gods, the crocodile cult must have morphed into something else,” said Ganesan, who was in Chennai to deliver a lecture, ‘Crocodile cult in the Indus Valley Civilisation and its later survival’ at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chemmencherry.
