Hi a nice article today in the hindu on the predominance of lion motifs in pallava architecture.
and for the matter in sinhala architecture too.
a foreign scholar has wondered the south not being a habitat of the lion how come it was so popular.
but then what came to my mind is references in the dasavthar to the lion must be thousands of years old.
can someone tell us whether lions roamed these areas( literary quotes) in the past and their habitat has shrunk to my knowledge lions exist only in zoos except in gujarat. does any one need to correct me?
Is there any Tamil word for the lion ? Since Tamilnadu is not a habitat for the lions, most ancient Tamils would not have seen a lion. It was perhaps a mystic animal ( like the Yali ) associated with religeous practices. Knowledge of the lions might have been gained from the people who migrated from the north or through travellers.
can we be so sure that lions never were her in the past? there are so many legends abounding in the south for example temples like padmanabaswamy temple in trivandrum- a divya desam it has a legend of a lion roaming the parikrama after the temple is closed for the night. this legend is quite old and what about the narasimha temples mentioned in t prabandhams.
so many lion headed vishnu temples abound in the south.
venketesh > > > > Is there any Tamil word for the lion ? Since Tamilnadu > > is not a habitat for the lions, most ancient Tamils > > would not have seen a lion. It was perhaps a mystic > > animal ( like the Yali ) associated with religeous > > practices. Knowledge of the lions might have been > > gained from the people who migrated from the north or > > through travellers. > > ====================== > > Reminds me of SIMMA KODI and RISHABA KODI of Pallavas - which Kalki > talks about! > > > sps >
surprising news from the wiki Until the late Pleistocene (about 10,000 years ago), the lion was the most widespread large land mammal beside humans. They were found in most of Africa, much of Eurasia from western Europe to India, and the Bering land bridge and, in the Americas, from the Yukon to Peru.
so our anscestors could have had a few hundred lions ( on the route to extention)living during pallava chola period.
But we can refer to the Cankam poetry for any reference to the lions of Tamilnadu. P L Samy ( an IAS officer ) has written exhaustive books on the flora and fauna of the Cankam age. I'm not sure whether this book is in print today. It is a good reference point to research this subject.
The animal which died in Veeranam lake after a fight with wild boar, and thus escaped being killed by Karikalan, Vandhiyathevan and Manimekalai - is it tiger or siruthai? Sampath
the article itself is very vague - not sure what the author intended - talking of the arrival of the pallavas etc. dont know how these get to print - while other scholarly works dont!!!
we should be also talking about the sinhalese, where there are more lions in mythology and history than any other culture. the sinhales ruling family is supposed to have descended from a lion. tropical lanka has had very little chance for real lions to have lived. sigiriya is one example of the lion in their culture. venketesh