The Archeological Survey of India, a team of archeologists led by T. Satyamurthy, discovered the remains of an ancient temple and city walls near the town of Mahabalipuram, the Associated Press announced Feb. 18. This uncovering resulted from the Dec. 26 tsunami that destroyed the beaches of various South Asian countries and claimed thousands of lives.
Local reports of giant stone animal carvings, which appeared on the beach after the tsunami passed, caught the attention of the Indian government, and a team of archeologists was sent to investigate.
Satyamurthy described the huge stone statues his team found when they got there. Each of the figures is over six feet tall, and the recovered objects now include the elaborately carved, life-sized head and shoulders of an elephant, a horse in flight, and a life-sized, reclining lion. The team also found remnants of an ancient city wall, a bas relief that Satyamurthy said he believes once belonged in a temple, and several other building remains nearby. He noted that several of the stone statues that were uncovered by the tsunami have small niches with statues of deities inside them, indicating that they may also have belonged in temples.
The modern city of Mahabalipuram, also known as "Mamallapuram," sits on the Bay of Bengal in southeastern India. For several decades, this location has boasted a large tourist population because of its beautiful beaches and pristine national monuments. But after the tsunami, many of the beaches were destroyed or cluttered with debris, and 99 lives were lost in the city itself with another several hundred in the surrounding areas. The accompanying erosion washed thousands of tons of sand away, exposing bedrock in some places, but it was not until early February that word of what else it had uncovered reached the Archeological Survey of India.
According to the Associated Press release, excitement is building because British travel writers in the early 1800s wrote of legends of a port city with seven huge pagodas along the shore near Mahabalipuram, six of which mysteriously submerged into the sea along with most of the city, leaving one small set of ruins. Dispatched as a myth relative to the western tales of Troy in Homer's "Iliad" or Atlantis in Plato's dialogues, the descriptions of these elaborate temples now may prove to have some basis in history. It is known that lions, elephants and peacocks were commonly used to decorate temples during the seventh and eighth centuries in this region, and their presence at Mahabalipuram has supported dating techniques that put this ancient, religious port city in the early seventh century.
"Our excavations will throw more light on these," Satyamurthy said. "With the waters receding and the coastline changing, we expect more edifices to be exposed."
When she heard of the nature of the discovery, University Archeology Prof. Tyler Jo Smith said the disaster has provided unusual archeological possibilities.
"It is extraordinary when a natural disaster of this magnitude, something in itself so destructive, aids in the recovering of archeological remains rather than the annihilation of them," Smith said.
She compared the event to the volcanic eruptions on Thera and Pompeii that destroyed local civilizations while at the same time preserving them.
University Associate Prof. of Art History Dan Ehnbom, who specializes in Asian studies, added that earlier natural disasters also had revealed ancient sculptures.
"One of the most important Indian sculptures of the third century B.C. was revealed to local inhabitants only after Ganges flood waters receded in Patna in the early part of the 20th century."
According to www.indiantravelportal.com, Mahabalipuram already was a World Heritage Site. Its famous ancient carvings and its more recently-constructed shore temples attract thousands of Hindu pilgrims and tourists every year. Now it is attracting archeologists and Indian navy divers, who are collaborating on what is turning into an expansive undersea archeological investigation. Since the site was declared an official dig last week, several more objects have been discovered offshore in the Bay of Bengal itself, including many more stone artifacts linked to ancient temples. It now seems that most of the dig will be taking place underwater.
"Underwater archeology is an extremely specialized and important branch of archeology," Smith explained. "Artifacts discovered underwater often would not have survived on land. This is particularly true of organic materials like wood, or sculptures made of Bronze or other materials that would have been melted down on land and the material reused long ago."
Satyamurthy and his colleagues are expected to release official reports on the Mahabalipuram site in the coming year, and anticipations are high.
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