Adam's Bridge (Tamil: ஆதாம்
பாலம் ātām pālam), also
known as Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu (Tamil: இராமர்
பாலம் Irāmar pālam,
Sanskrit: रामसेतु, rāmasetu),
is a chain of limestone shoals, between Pamban Island, also known as Rameswaram
Island, off the southeastern coast of Tamil Nadu, India, and Mannar Island, off
the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka. Geological evidence suggests that this
bridge is a former land connection between India and Sri Lanka.
The bridge is 18 miles (30 km) long and separates the Gulf
of Mannar (southwest) from the Palk Strait (northeast). Some of the sandbanks
are dry and the sea in the area is very shallow, being only 3 ft to 30 ft (1 m
to 10 m) deep in places, which hinders navigation. It was reportedly passable
on foot up to the 15th century until storms deepened the channel: temple
records seem to say that Rama’s Bridge was completely above sea level until it
broke in a cyclone in 1480 CE.
Name
The bridge was first mentioned in the ancient Indian
Sanskrit epic Ramayana of Valmiki.The name Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu
(Sanskrit; setu: bridge) refers to the bridge built by the Vanara (ape men)
army of Lord Rama in Hindu mythology, which he used to reach Lanka and rescue
his wife Sita from the Rakshasa king, Ravana.The Ramayana attributes the
building of this bridge to Rama in verse 2-22-76, naming it as Setubandhanam, a
name that persists till today.
The sea separating India and Sri Lanka is called
Sethusamudram meaning "Sea of the Bridge". Maps prepared by a Dutch
cartographer in 1747, available at the Tanjore Saraswathi Mahal Library show
this area as Ramancoil, a colloquial form of the Tamil Raman Kovil (or Rama's
Temple). Another map of Mughal India prepared by J. Rennel in 1788 retrieved
from the same library called this area as "the area of the Rama
Temple", referring to the temple dedicated to Lord Rama at Rameswaram.Many
other maps in Schwartzberg's historical atlas and other sources such as travel
texts by Marco Polo call this area by various names such as Sethubandha and
Sethubandha Rameswaram.
The western world first encountered it in "historical
works in the 9th century" by Ibn Khordadbeh in his Book of Roads and
Kingdoms (ca. 850 CE), referring to it is Set Bandhai or "Bridge of the Sea".Later,
Alberuni described it. The earliest map that calls this area by the name Adam's
bridge was prepared by a British cartographer in 1804, probably referring to an
Abrahamic legend, according to which Adam used the bridge to reach a mountain
(identified with Adam's Peak) in Sri Lanka, where he stood repentant on one
foot for 1,000 years, leaving a large hollow mark resembling a footprint.
Location
Historical map of Adam's Bridge and environs, prior to the
cyclone of 1964
Adam's Bridge starts as chain of shoals from the Dhanushkodi
tip of India's Pamban Island and ends at Sri Lanka's Mannar Island. Pamban
Island is semi-connected to the Indian mainland by 2 km long Pamban Bridge.
Mannar Island is connected to mainland Sri Lanka by a causeway. The border
between India and Sri Lanka is said to pass across one of the shoals constituting
one of the shortest land borders in the world.Adam's bridge and neighbouring
areas like Rameswaram, Dhanushkodi, Devipattinam and Thirupullani are mentioned
in the context of various legends in Ramayana.
Transportation and navigation
Rail Bridge from India Mainland to Pamban Island
The Pamban railway bridge, which connects the Pamban island
with the Indian mainland was constructed in 1914
Pamban Island (Tamil Nadu, India) with its small port of
Rameswaram is about 2 km from mainland India. The Pamban Bridge crossing the
Pamban channel links Pamban Island with mainland India. It refers to both: a
road bridge and a cantilever railway bridge. Small boats would go below the
2065 m long road bridge and the railway bridge would open up.
The problem in navigation exists because big ships can't
travel in the shallow waters of the Pamban channel. Dredging in this channel
would cost more than dredging a channel in the Rama Setu area, where the waters
are comparatively deep and lesser earth would have to be dredged. Hence, in
2001, the Government of India approved a multi-million dollar Sethusamudram
Shipping Canal Project that aims to create a ship channel across the Palk Bay
cutting across Rama Setu. Various organizations have opposed the project based
on religious, economic and environmental grounds and have sought the
implementation of one of the alternative alignments considered during the
earlier stages of the discussion.
A ferry service linked Dhanushkodi in India with Talaimannar
in Sri Lanka. The service was part of the Indo-Ceylon Railway service during
the British Rule. One could buy a railway ticket from Chennai to Colombo,
whereby people traveled by rail from Chennai to Pamban island, go by ferry to
Talaimannar, and then go again by rail to Colombo. in 1964, a cyclone
completely destroyed Dhanushkodi, a train about to enter the station, the
tracks and the pier and heavily damaged the shores of Palk Bay and Palk Strait.Dhanushkodi
was not rebuilt and the train then finished at Rameswaram. There was a small
ferry service from there to Talaimannar, but it has been suspended around 1982
because of the fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist
LTTE.
Geological evolution
Considerable diversity of opinion and confusion exists about
the nature and origin of this structure. In the 19th century, there were two
prevalent theories explaining the structure. One considered it to be formed by
a process of accretion and rising of the land, while the other surmised that it
was formed by the breaking away of Sri Lanka from the Indian mainland. The
friable calcerous ridges are broken into large rectangular blocks, which
perhaps gave rise to the belief that the causeway is an artificial construction.
According to V. Ram Mohan of the Centre of Natural Hazards
and Disaster Studies of the University of Madras "reconstruction of the
geological evolution of the island chain is a challenging task and has to be
carried out based on circumstantial evidence". The lack of comprehensive
field studies explains many of the uncertainties regarding the nature and
origin of Adam's Bridge, which essentially consists of a series of parallel
ledges of sandstone and conglomerates that are hard at the surface and grows
coarse and soft as it descends to sandy banks.
Studies have variously described the structure as a chain of
shoals, coral reefs, a ridge formed in the region owing to thinning of the earth's
crust, a double tombolo, a sand spit, or barrier islands. It has been reported
that this bridge was formerly the world's largest tombolo before it was split
into a chain of shoals by the rise in mean sea level few thousand years ago.
Based on satellite remote sensing data, but without actual
field verification, Marine and Water Resources Group of Space Application
Centre (SAC) of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) states that Adam's
Bridge comprises 103 small patch reefs lying in a linear pattern with reef
crest (flattened, emergent – especially during low tides – or nearly emergent
segment of a reef), sand cays (accumulations of loose coral sands and beach
rock) and intermittent deep channels. The coral reefs are designated by the
different studies variously as ribbon and atoll reefs.
The geological process that gave rise to this structure has
also been attributed to crustal downwarping, block faulting, and mantle plume
activity by one study.while another theory attributes it to continuous sand
deposition and the natural process of sedimentation leading to the formation of
a chain of barrier islands related to rising sea levels.Another theory affirms
that the origin and linearity of the Adam's bridge may be due to the old
shoreline – implying that the two landmasses of India and Sri Lanka were once
connected – from where coral reefs evolved.
Another study explains the origin the structure due to
longshore drifting currents which moved in an anticlockwise direction in the
north and clockwise direction in the south of Rameswaram and Talaimannar. The
sand was supposedly dumped in a linear pattern along the current shadow zone
between Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar with later accumulation of corals over
these linear sand bodies.[citation needed] In a diametrically opposing view,
another group of geologists propose crustal thinning theory, block faulting and
a ridge formed in the region owing to thinning and asserts that development of
this ridge augmented the coral growth in the region and in turn coral cover
acted as a `sand trapper'.
The tombolo model affirms a constant sediment source and a
strong unidirectional or bi-directional (monsoonal) longshore current.[citation
needed] One study tentatively concludes that there is insufficient evidence to
indicate eustatic emergence and that the raised reef in south India probably
results from a local uplift. Other studies also conclude that during periods of
lowered sea level over the last 100,000 years, Adam's Bridge has provided an
intermittent land connection between India and Sri Lanka, which according to
famous ornithologists Sidney Dillon Ripley and Bruce Beehler supports the
vicariance model for speciation in some birds of the Indian Subcontinent.
Age
Geological Survey of India (GSI) carried out a special
programme called “Project Rameswaram” that concluded that age data of corals
indicate that the Rameswaram island has evolved since 125,000 years ago.
Radiocarbon dating of samples in this study suggests that the domain between
Rameswaram and Talaimannar may have thus been exposed around 18,000 years ago.Thermoluminescence
dating by GSI concludes that the sand dunes of Dhanushkodi to Adam's bridge
started forming only about 500–600 years ago.
Investigation by Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of
Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, led by Professor S.M. Ramasamy dates the structure
to 3,500 years.In the same study, carbon dating of some ancient beaches between
Thiruthuraipoondi and Kodiyakarai shows the Thiruthuraipoondi beach dates back
to 6,000 years and Kodiyakarai around 1,100 years ago. Another study suggests
that the appearance of the reefs and other evidence indicate their recency, and
a coral sample gives a radiocarbon age of 4020±160 years.
Early surveys and
dredging efforts:
Pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar, c.a. 1926
Owing to shallow waters, Adam's bridge presents a formidable
hindrance to navigation through the Palk strait. Though trade across the
India-Sri Lanka divide has been active since at least the first millennium BCE,
it has been limited to small boats and dinghies. Larger ocean-going vessels
from the West have had to navigate around Sri Lanka to reach India's eastern
coast. Eminent British geographer Major James Rennell, who surveyed the region
as a young officer in the late eighteenth century, suggested that a
"navigable passage could be maintained by dredging the strait of
Ramisseram [sic]". However little notice was given to his proposal,
perhaps because it came from "so young and unknown an officer", and
the idea was only revived 60 years later.
In 1823, Sir Arthur Cotton (then an Ensign), was trusted
with the responsibility of surveying the Pamban channel, which separates the
Indian mainland from the island of Rameswaram and forms the first link of Ram
Setu. Geological evidence indicates that this was at one point bridged by a
land connection, and some temple records suggest that the connection was broken
by violent storms in 1480. Cotton suggested that the channel be dredged to
enable passage of ships, but nothing was done till 1828, when some rocks were
blasted and removed under the direction of Major Sim.
A more detailed marine survey of Ram Setu was undertaken in
1837 by Lieutenants F. T. Powell, Ethersey, Grieve and Christopher along with
draughtsman Felix Jones, and operations to dredge the channel were recommenced
the next year.However these, and subsequent efforts in the 19th
century, did not succeed in keeping the passage navigable for any vessels
except those with a light draft.
Controversies
Certain historical inscriptions, old travel guides, old
dictionary references and some old maps have been said to reinforce a religious
and geographical belief that this is an ancient bridge.(see Ramayana). In 2007
the Sri Lankan Tourism Development Authority sought to promote religious
tourism from Hindu piligrims in India by including the phenomenon as one of the
points on its "Ramayana Trail", celebrating the legend of Prince
Rama. Sri Lankan historians condemn the undertaking as "a gross distortion
of Sri Lankan history".Vaishnava News Network and some other U.S.-based
news services suggested that they had discovered the remains of the bridge
built by Rama and his Vanara army that is referred to in the Ramayana, and that
it was not a natural formation, basing their claim on 2002 NASA satellite
footage.NASA distanced itself from the claims saying that what had been
captured was nothing more than a 30-km-long, naturally occurring chain of
sandbanks. Remote sensing images or photographs from orbit cannot provide
direct information about the origin or age of a chain of islands, and certainly
cannot determine whether humans were involved in producing any of the patterns
seen."
A team from the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of
Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi led by Professor S.M. Ramasamy in 2003 said
"the land/beaches were formed between Ramanathapuram and Pamban because of
the long shore drifting currents which moved in an anti-clockwise direction in
the north and clockwise direction in the south of Rameswaram and Talaimannar
about 3,500 years ago." and, "as the carbon dating of the beaches
roughly matches the dates of Ramayana, its link to the epic needs to be
explored".A former director of the Geological Survey of India, S.
Badrinarayanan, claims that such a natural formation would be impossible. He
justifies the same by the presence of a loose sand layer under corals for the
entire stretch. Corals normally form above rocks.He feels that thorough
analysis was not conducted by the Geological Survey of India before undertaking
the SSCP project. Government of India, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court of
India, said that there is no historical proof of the bridge being built by
Rama.In connection with the canal project, the Madras High Court in its verdict
stated that the Rama Sethu is a man-made structure.
Hindu belief is that the bridge was created by Shri Rama and
Shri Lakshman with the assistance of Lord Hanuman and the 'monkey army' to
reach Lanka in order to find Shri Rama's wife Sita who was kidnapped by Ravana.
A 2007 publication of the National Remote Sensing Agency said that the
structure "may be man-made", contradicting the report from the
Archaeological Survey of India which found no evidence for it being man-made.
In a 2008 court case, a spokesman for the government stated "So where is
the Setu? We are not destroying any bridge. There is no bridge. It was not a
man-made structure. It may be a superman-made structure, but the same superman
had destroyed it. That is why for centuries nobody mentioned anything about it.
It (Ram Setu) has become an object of worship only recently,"
