Water dharma

"Neerinri amayaadhu ulagenin yaaryaarkkum 

vaaninru amayaadhu ozhukku" - Thirukkural 

There can be no life without water 

Lack of rains may even derail Dharma (Virtuousness)

We were discussing the topic of Water Management in Ancient India as a seminar topic under the predominantly Indology centric department few days back. “There will be no water as sacred, elixir of life etc., it will be purely on water management as the emphasis is on science,” told our professor. The precursor to the day-long seminar was an expert talk on the same topic. The talk was an inspiration, as it was seamless in its approach to the subject from the emotional point of view, invoking instances from the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the practical ways of conservation and management of water in ancient India.

I was a bit perplexed – why should the seminar papers be only science and why not include the spiritual. The ancient Indians never separated them into different silos? Having come back only recently from a trip of many of the iconic step wells in the country, my mind kept going back to the coalescing of the spiritual and science in those structures. Two of them are very well known, the UNESCO world heritage monument Rani Ki Vav at Patan, and the Adalaj Step Well near Ahmedabad, so I am not going into details about them, but will present a small photo feature on the third one, the Thiruvellarai Swastika step well from Tamil Nadu.

The unusual Swastika well was excavated during the reign of Pallava king Dantivarman and inscription gives details of one Kamban Arayan having done it as the king’s instance in 805 CE. The aesthetics of the tank, the beauty of the deities who adorn the well is visually evident. What is even more interesting is the beauty of the verse inscribed on the well. It is not very unusual for a temple to have a tank nearby. Every kshetram goes with a specific tirtha, and a special sthala vriksha. But, this is not attached to the temple though closer to the ancient Pundarikaksha Perumal temple. The beauty of the verse made me recollect the Junagadh inscription of Rudradaman. Why did they etch beautiful literature on to something as mundane as a well, a lake? Rudradaman’s inscription makes an interesting point about how the Sudarshana Lake has been fortified, and also been made good to look at. The poetry, the aesthetics all connects us to the sheer water tank at a different level a modern engineering marvel of a dam cannot. May be that is my way of looking at it…

There was science as well as the subtle art of emotionally linking us to the heritage that is life sustaining. The dams have killed the rivers … not like the dam of Karikalan that still let the waters of Cauvery flow into the sea and merge at the great Puhar. There is simply no water in Cauvery today even for the biggest of the annual and decadal river related festivals. The Palar that sustained a great population, the Cooum that has become a smelly word today saw many a temples coming up on its shores as an author recently documented in her book. The science just looked at the storage capacity, the hectares the dam waters would irrigate, but just couldn’t bring about the emotional connect the residents would have with a living river, or a tirtha.

Looking at it as a tirtha did not make our ancestors blind to the concept of “water management” or conservation. What would we lose if we can look at their beliefs as well as their skills.

“Happiness and pleasure, you give us both, noble rivers,

your water, we sprinkle around our food.

Great is your glory

o’waters,unbounded, unstoppable, is the fame that you carry” - Rig Veda Nadi Stuti translation by Kant Singh                                                                                                                        from paper uploaded on Academia