Author:
Publication: Sify News
Date: May 29, 2004
URL: http://headlines.sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13485843&headline=Floating~stones~found~in~Rameshwaram
Do stones float in water? The answer
would be a certain no.
But in the island of Rameshwaram
in Tamil Nadu, stones, it seems, do float in water.
Difficult to believe-but it's a
reality.
Floating stones of Rameshwaram have
a mythological twist to it. According to the Hindu mythological epic Ramayana,
which was supposed to have taken place over 17 million years ago, Lord
Rama and his army of monkeys used stones to build a bridge across the Palk
Strait to link Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka.
Legend as well as archaeological
findings indicate the first signs of human inhabitation in Sri Lanka date
back to the primitive age and it is assumed that the bridge's age is also
almost equivalent.
G. Mohan Das, a local historian
and caretaker of the stones in the temple, said that these stones could
have been the kind used to build the mythological bridge.
"The history of these floating stones
is that when Lord Rama made a bridge to trek to Lanka to bring back his
consort Sita, these were the same stones used. But today's educated people
do not agree to it. They believe it is a coral that is found in Australia,
in small islands. We believe there is no difference in these stones. Both
the stones do not have air in them. The composition is the same and it
has 40 kinds of chemicals," he said.
Space images taken by NASA reveal
a series of rock outcrops in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka.
Some historians say these could be the part of the mythological bridge
linking Indian peninsula with Sri Lanka island.
