ORAL TRADITIONS
Legend and history
THEODORE BASKARAN
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The book under review deals with an enduring legend about Talakad, near Mysore... The Curse of Talakad: (Re)situating and (Re)contextualizing a Legend in History, Sashi Sivaramakrishna, Rupa & Co, 2005, price not stated.
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HISTORIANS like David Shulman caution us that legends and folklores should not be discounted as sources of information for history. And India abounds in such tales, which need to be interpreted. He points out that there is a distinction between reports that are meant to be factual and reports that are not considered factual. The book under review deals with one such source, an enduring legend about Talakad, near Mysore, known to historians as the headquarters of the Western Ganga dynasty.
The name Talakad conjures up images of sand dunes and medieval temples buried under the sand. In recent years, the site has been popularised by filmmakers. The earliest reference to Talakad occurs in an inscription of the Western Ganga monarch, Durvinita Kongini, who ruled in the 6th Century A.D. Later, the records of the Chola king Aditya I talk about Talakad being under Chola suzerainty. Emperor Rajaraja continued to rule over this area. In 1116 A.D., the Hoysala King, Vishnuvardhana defeated the Cholas and wrested control of the area. The sway of the later-day Gangas extended over parts of the present-day Tamil Nadu. The inscriptions in the Jain cave at Vallimalai near Vellore speak of the Ganga kings.
The origins
The legend which surrounds this place is of much later origin. In 1610, Tirumala II of Srirangapattana, a vassal of Vijayanagara empire, was overpowered by Raja Wodeyar of Mysore. Tirumala and his wife Alamelamma retreated to Malingi, a village near Talakad, on the banks of the Cauvery. She took with her the jewels she used to lend to the temple priest twice a week, to adorn the goddess in that temple. Wodeyar thought that the jewels belonged to the temple and ordered its confiscation. Alamelamma would rather die than part with the jewels. She collected the precious ornaments and drowned herself in Cauvery, but not before uttering three curses: "Let Talakad become sand. Let Malingi become a whirlpool. Let the Mysore king fail to beget heirs."
Around Talakad, there are sand dunes covering an area of nearly ten square kilometres. The river at Malingi is deep and treacherous and the Mysore kings have not had male heirs for the past many generations.
Sashi Sivaramakrishna, the author of this book, while making a documentary film on the curse of Talakad, began examining the historical and geological evidences to unravel the mystery of the legend and the result is this interesting little book. The author uses basically two sources to examine the Talakad legend. The first is the travelogue of Dr. Francis Buchanan, a surgeon who was appointed to carry out a survey for the East India company. He has left a fascinating account of the area, including a vivid description of Saravana Belgola. The second source is the Gazetteer of Mysore district by B.L. Rice.
Of recent origin
The author arrives at the conclusion that the story of the curses developed between Buchanan's travel, which was around 1800 and the time Rice wrote his Gazetteer which is 1879. A crucial evidence he points out is that of Gaurishankara temple, built in 1750. So it was only much later that the temple was covered by sand. It has been excavated by archaeologists recently. This would indicate that when the temple was built, about three hundred years ago, there were no sand dunes. So the story of the curse and the legend also must be of recent origin. The conclusion is that the legend was constructed long after Alamelamma died. However, about the third curse, of the Mysore kings not having heirs, the author is unable to come to a conclusion.
There is a useful bibliography, for those who want to pursue the topic. The photographs are of poor quality, particularly the black and white pictures. Nothing can be seen of the portrait sculpture of Alamelamma or Tirumala II.
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