It’s been raining heavily, and water has flooded the land in parts. Lives were lost, a bridge collapsed, and croplands were submerged. In this scenario, a tale comes to mind that I would like to retell about the Kaveri Canal. It is a true story that I found in the Silver Jubilee Souvenir, 2008, of the Kaveri Delta Farmers’ Association of Tamil Nadu. It was apparently first recorded in the 19th century in the Tanjore District Gazetteer during the British Raj. If this story has a moral or inspiration, it is that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, and if nobody is hurt and it’s for a worthwhile cause, it’s alright in this ancient land to go with the flow.
That was the case at any rate in 1804 when the British rebuilt the Grand Anicut on the Kaveri. ‘Anaikattu’ in Tamil means a holding structure like a canal or dam. The Grand Anicut was made by King Karikala Chola in the early years of the last millennium and is one of the oldest canals in the world still in use. It was built to regulate the monsoon waters overflowing from the Kaveri to the river Kollidam. Boulders were laid across the riverbed like a long snake. A grand canal was made—1,008 feet long, 40 to 60 feet wide, and 15 to 18 feet high. It was the largest civil work made for the public good anywhere in India until the British engineers arrived.
Between 1804 and 1806, the British made some repairs and began to add sluice gates and an overhead bridge to Karikala’s canal. After a massive effort of many months, when the water gates were raised, at last, an inspection officer found that the 19th span of the bridge on the Kollidam side had collapsed overnight. It was rebuilt with greater care over the next month but promptly collapsed again. They remade it for the third time with the closest supervision, but no, all of a sudden, it fell down again in a mass of stone and rubble.
The stupefied engineers wondered what was going wrong. A strange story came out in the agitated discussion that followed these catastrophes. The construction inspector reluctantly revealed that on the night of the first collapse, Lord Hanuman, revered as the guardian deity of the Kaveri Delta’s rice fields, had appeared to him in a dream. Lord Hanuman had told him, “There is a fault underneath in the riverbed. But my idol is lying under the broken span. Unearth it and make me a shrine there so that I may guard this bridge across the waters as I am meant to for the welfare of the people.”
“I would not have mentioned it if the span had not collapsed for the third time even after all the care we took,” said the construction inspector, greatly embarrassed but too worried to hold back, for the serial collapses defied all logic.
Not unnaturally, Capt J L Caldwell, the British military engineer in charge, laughed at this fanciful story. But he himself had a terrible dream that night about vanaras. It was so vivid that he told his fellow officers about it the next day and was scoffed at in turn. The engineer was glad to be persuaded that it was all nonsense but despaired of a practical solution. That night he dreamed again of vanaras, but Lord Hanuman appeared as well and told him kindly, “Make a bend in your structure at the spot and make a small shrine to me there. That will hold up the span.”
This was so uncannily precise that the next day, without further ado, the engineer had his team excavate under the rubble. Under the 19th span, lay the promised idol, rather a square slab of granite, with a lively figure of Lord Hanuman carved on it in the temple style of over a thousand years ago. Was it a relic of those times that had been disturbed? Who knew that this idol’s time had come to see the light of day? After three spectacular and mysterious collapses, the engineer was taking no chances. A shrine was built at once, its consecration speedily performed, and the British addition to the Anicut was remodelled as directed by Capt Caldwell’s dream. It is reportedly holding up well more than 200 years after these curious events took place along the old Chola canal. Perhaps it is this incident that partly inspired Rudyard Kipling’s story in 1893, The Bridge Builders.
I am told that every year before the planting of the bhogam or first paddy crop, the farmers ceremonially offer their paddy seeds at this shrine and then to the river. Only then is the water for irrigation released from the sluices of the Grand Anicut.
Renuka Narayanan
(shebaba09@gmail.com)