74 FOOTE : GEOLOGY OF MADURA AND TINNEVELLY DISTEICTS. 



puranij the city of Rama's district) bears as his highest title the name of 

 Sethupathi or " keeper of the bridge/' 



From the description given in the '^Bengal Pilot'' of Adam's bridge, the 

 shoal ridge connecting Rameswaram island with the island of Manar and 

 with Ceylon, it consists of precisely the same gritty calcareous sandstone 

 as the Paniban barrier and the sandstone quay cliff of the Ramnad coast. 



Owing to a system of jointing which crosses the Pamban sandstone 

 Jointing of the sand- barrier nearly at right angles, the action of the 

 stone ; its efEect. waves has broken it up into a series of large flat 



blocks which so strongly resemble a series of gigantic stepping stones 

 that it is impossible to wonder at the imagination of the author or (in 

 analogy with the Homeric epos) authors of the Ramayana that the 

 rocky ridge was really an old causeway of human construction. 



A similar system of jointing shows, though not very distinctly, in the 

 sandstone " qnay " cliff at Valimukkam, 36 miles west-by-south of 

 Pamban Straits. 



According to the famous old Hindu epic the construction of this bridge 

 The leo-end of Rama's ^^^ ^^® ^° ^^^ industry and enterprise of the great 

 ^"'•Ig®- army of monkeys and bears led by Rama and his 



long-tailed friends Sugrivaand Hanuman to the invasion of Lanka in their 

 war with Ravana, the king of the demons and the abductor of Sita, Rama's 

 wife. The engineering part of the undertaking was specially entrusted to 

 the monkey Nala, a son of Visvakarma, the famous architect, he having 

 the special power (which would in many cases be much coveted by the com- 

 manding R. E. of a modern army) of making blocks of stone to float on the 

 water. There is no apparent reason why the proved up-heaval of Rama's 

 bridge may not have taken place within the semi-mythical time preced- 

 ing some invasion of the heretical Buddhist kingdom of Lanka (Ceylon) 

 by the Brahmanical Aryans of the mainland and their Dravidian allies.^ 



1 That such au invasion of the ishmd of Lanka (Ceylon) from the mainland may have 

 taken place in bygone ages along the recently upheaved isthmus is well within the limits 

 of historical probiibility. Such elevation of the sea bottom would unquestionably be re- 

 "■aided as a miraculous event and be ascribed to superhuman agency, and the fervid ima- 

 gination of successive Aryan bards may be easily credited with sutlicient powers of in- 

 vention to have evolved all the marvellous mythical details that have been superadded by 

 way of embellishment. 



' ( 74 ) 



