Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXXIV No. 7, July 16-31, 2024
History of recording climate change on the Coromandel Coast*
-- by Anantanarayanan Raman, Anantanarayanan.Raman@csiro.au; araman@csu.edu.au
Climate change is a burning issue today. Everyone attributes losses – economic and otherwise – to the unpredictable, inconsistent behaviour of climate presently. However, the predominant, present-day thinking that climate change is a recent-time geophysical phenomenon is incorrect. A 19th-century Irish physicist John Tyndall first recognised and scientifically explained climate-change patterns in 1861. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, we – humans – understood that the industrial emissions, such as CO2, CO, CH4, N2O (the greenhouse gases) alter earth’s energy balance.Such an alteration eventually affects the climate. Therefore, what is correct is that we – Homo sapiens – are fully responsible for the accelerated rate of change in climate, especially in the last century, because of vigorous industrialisation. Alternate theories explaining climate change exist; one is the ‘solar-variability theory’ advanced by Milutin Milankovitch (1879–1958) of Dalj on the Danube in 1911. Milankovitch related climate to the seasonal and latitudinal variations of solar radiation on the earth. Our interest in understanding climate change and its negative impacts on the human society has quadrupled from the 1990s, although in actuality, we never want to concede that we are the primary cause for the accelerated rate of changes in climate and its patterns, especially from the mid-twentieth century.
S. Jeyaseela Stephen (hereafter ‘S.J.S.’, Institute of Indo-European Studies, Pondicherry) is known for his books on the history of the Coromandel. The term Coromandel is the Portuguese corruption of the Tamil word Chola-andalam that refers to the c. 20,000 km land area in the peninsular India, bordered by the Utkal Plains in the north, Bay of Bengal in the east, the Eastern Ghats in the west, and Kanyakumari in the south. In this book, S.J.S. treats a landscape wider than that described above and even parts of the Deccan plateau (e.g., Mysore) as the Coromandel.
Ancient Indians perceived climate as an adjunct of forest health. For instance, Kautilya in Pataliputra speaks of forest health and climate in Artasastra, verse 7.12.7. The Aranyakas, a class of ancient-Indian scriptures, speak of deep philosophical thoughts linked to nature, treating forests as the appreciable manifestation of the Divine. The Aranyakas aver forests and climate as interconnected essentials in the overall scheme of the organic world. Frederick Ricketts Hemingway, Collector of Thanjavur in the 1900s, alludes to a severe famine there because of the failure of rains as reported in Sekkizhar’s poetic account, the Thiruthondar Puranam.
Explanation of plant transpiration and translocation by Stephen Hales of Kent, England (1677–1761) in 1726 and Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau of Paris, France (1700–1782) in 1758 first clarified tree-climate relationships and the pivotal role trees play in influencing water cycle. This explanation changed the scientific understanding of climate. The Europeans who came into India in the mid Seventeenth Century linked climate and its vagaries to two other phenomena: (1) droughts and famines; (2) epidemics of unknown ætiology. In effect, the European missionaries and medical doctors living in the 18th Century Coromandel recorded weather for the above two reasons. A Danish–Halle missionary Johann Ernst Geister – then residing in San Thomé – maintained weather records pertaining to every day, monthly, and seasonal wind movements and rainfall, using rudimentary devices, such as a weather vane.
William Roxburgh (1751–1815) – a medical doctor attached to the English East-India Company in Madras – is one key name in the Coromandel’s weather records, although he is better known as a botanist. At that time, the miasma theory (earlier proposed by Hippocrates, the Second (4th century BCE)) attributed a relationship between weather and human health; the miasma theory prevailed as the explanation of infectious diseases caused by microbes until the end of the 19th century. The miasma theory suggested that diseases are produced due to unhealthy or polluted vapors rising from the ground, or from decomposed material. Today, we know that microbial human pathogens are air-borne; therefore, the miasma theory, after all, was correct. This was another reason, why climate patterns were searched in the Coromandel. Roxburgh gathered weather data from the time he arrived in Madras in the 1770s. While at Nagapattinam and Samarlakota, Roxburgh measured weather three times a day using the then popular Jesse Ramsden® weather-measuring devices. Based on the measurements made over several consecutive years, Roxburgh forecasted the drought that eventuated in 1789. Roxburgh incidentally speaks of a ‘cyclic pattern’ in droughts in peninsular India. Worthwhile, however, it is to note that Indians recognised a cyclic pattern in the incidence of famines in the 14th and 15th Centuries – much before Roxburgh – as a 12-year famine cycle.
Towards the end of the late 18th Century, the Europeans living in the Coromandel valued forests as the key for sound economic performance of their colonies, particularly India. Scientific management of natural forests along the coasts of Malabar and South Canara of the Madras Presidency was planned and surveys were launched. Additionally, documentation of the famines of 1769–1770, 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902, that resulted in the death of millions of humans and cattle were carried out. Consequently the influencing monsoon patterns, and those of climate, were recorded by the British administrators. In that context, the climate-related works done and comments made by Francis Buchanan (1762–1829) and Edward Balfour (1813–1889) during their stay in the Coromandel, unfortunately, are starkly missing in this book.
Francis Buchanan – a Scottish medical doctor of the Bengal-Medical Establishment – was to survey agriculture, minerals, and the manufacturing activity in the Madras Presidency. Buchanan recorded weather patterns, seasons, and forests in this survey made in 1800–1801. Buchanan’s A Journey from Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar (1807) includes multiple remarks on the weather of the Coromandel. One remark is that rainfall levels had steadily deteriorated in the 1790s compared with those of previous decades.
Notes on the influence exercised by trees on the climate of a country is an informative article by Edward Green Balfour (1849), who was the Surgeon-General in Madras in the 1870s. In this article, Balfour speaks eloquently on the relevance of trees in retaining atmospheric moisture. He valued the relevance of water in human health, influenced by the thoughts of Joseph Priestley (English Chemist, 1733–1804), who had previously argued that the physiology of trees was critical for sound human health. Balfour relates to water as a finite material and its valuable role in water cycle in his 1849 article. Balfour was logical and expedient to deal with the problems concerning natural forests as a public-health issue.
S.J.S. indicates ‘Gibson Balfour and Cleghorn’ in p. 181, wherein the absence of a comma separating ‘Gibson’ and ‘Balfour’ confused me. In addition, ‘Gibson’ is indexed (p. 211) as ‘Balfour, Gibson’, suggesting Gibson as Balfour’s first name. Actually the Balfour referred by S.J.S. is ‘George Balfour’, the older brother of Edward Green Balfour. George Balfour (1809–1894) was a decorated soldier of the Madras Artillery and an active member of the Royal Geographical Society. Both George and Edward held identical views on climate. Edward Balfour’s efforts towards conservation measures of Indian forests cannot be gainsaid. The Gibson indicated by S.J.S. is Alexander Gibson (1800–1867), who trained as a medical doctor in Scotland and superintended the Dapuri Botanic Garden in Poona (presently the Empress Botanic Garden) between 1838 and 1867. The missionary–botanist Reverend Nicholas Alexander Dalzell (1817–1877) and Gibson together published the Flora of Bombay (Dalzell and Gibson 1861). Medical doctor Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn’s (1820–1895) role as a forester and his observations on the climate of in the 19th-century Madras presidency are presently well documented.
The History of the Climate Change on the Coromandel Coast includes seven chapters: (i) Historical Setting; (ii) Waterscapes: rainfall in Tamil country; (iii) Famine and drought in Tamil society; (iv) Storms and cyclones of Tamil littoral and the Europeans; (v) Hazards of sea, land and water, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes; (vi) Study of temperature and atmospheric pressure technology transfer from Europe to Tamil Coast; (vii) Concluding remarks. Chapters 2, 3, and 5 relate to climate of the 9th–19th Centuries, whereas the 4th to the 17th-19th centuries, and the 6th to the 18th–Nineteenth centuries. Three appendices occur in unnumbered pages at the end.
Appendix I supplies data pertaining to monthly and annual rainfall in the Coromandel in 1871–1900. Appendix II lists the years of famine as per the Tamil calendrical system and matching years as per the Gregorian calendrical system from 852 to 1866. Appendix III supplies the flood years, similar to calendrical details as in Appendix II.
The Historical Setting chapter provides the background for this book, which could have been tighter and crisper. The first paragraph (p. 13) explains the methods used to organise historical geography by integrating spatial and temporal data, reconstructing details, mostly, from inscriptions.
S.J.S. rationalises the intent of this book as a discourse on the Coromandel’s environmental history. This chapter starts with brief notes on the tinais (different landscapes in the Tamil country (300 BCE–200 CE). The other details included in this chapter are the ‘sources and methods’ and ‘structure of the study’. The latter, I understood as the structure of the book under review.
The second chapter, Waterscapes refers to structures built across the major rivers in the Coromandel. S.J.S. especially speaks of dams built by the Cholas on the river Kaveri. He cites evidence from the Silappathikaram and Velur Atmanatha Desikar’s Chola Mandala Sadhagam (seventeenth century), further supplemented by epigraphical evidence. That the term anaikattu meant not only a ‘dam’ of today, but it also meant the earthen embankments – occasionally enhanced with modest stone masonry in the Tamil-speaking Coromandel – needs an explanation for the non-Tamil readership. The Veeranam lake constructed by Raajaditya Cholan in 1010–1035 CE, a humongous body of stored water [1.5 TMC], functional today, includes hewn-stone faces along its steep slopes. Non-Coromandel examples of such anaikattus occur in pages 25–26: S.J.S. also speaks of a dam built at the confluence of Kollidam and Vadavaru rivers (Kaveri tributaries) by the Madras engineer Arthur Thomas Cotton in the 1830s. This chapter also includes brief details on lakes, their management, canals, channels, water tanks and sluices, wells, water rights and disputes that existed before the start of the Vijayanagara rule in the Coromandel in the 15th–16th centuries, and water management during the rule of Madurai and Thanjavur Nayakas. Pages 35–59 include archived data about water management during the administration by the Nayakas of Madurai and the Setupatis of Ramnad (presently Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga Districts) in the 16th–17th Centuries. This section includes several minute details of the administration of these rulers, the names of the departments that controlled water supply, and the revenue collected, further to rainfall data in Pondicherry in the 1760s, extracted from the diary maintained by Muthu Vijaya Thiruvengadam Pillai between 1791 and 1799. Pages 42–54 include vital data that have been generally overlooked until this point of time.
S.J.S. speaks of a custom-made crude rain gauge (spelt ‘gage’) by Roxburgh in Madras and rainfall data gathered by John Goldingham (1769–1849), Madras Astronomer, who has etched his name in the annals of Indian science by fixing the time of Madras (and, thus of India) aligning with GMT in 1802. William Henry Bayley, a Madras-Civil Servant (1831–1860) improvised the then available rain gauge by replacing the earthen pot with a quart-size glass bottle (1 qt = 1,132 ml) further to making a few other minor changes. Bayley speaks of the functionality of the improvised rain gauge in his memorandum submitted to the Government at Fort St. George. The Bayley article includes details of his proposal made to the government along with a line sketch of the gauge and a review of that proposal by John Thomas Smith, Chief Engineer, Fort St. George and Madras Mint Master (1839–1855). Smith endorses Bayley’s proposal offering a few minor modifications. He especially suggests to the Government to obtain six of Bayley’s improvised devices first and check their consistency in performance at the Madras Observatory. After that trial, which was successful, Charles Edward Faber (Chief Engineer, Fort St. George) approved the production of 180 such rain gauges for installation in the courts of puisne judges throughout Madras presidency.
Pages 45–55 include rainfall records maintained in Madras between 1803 and 1887, in Tiruchirapalli, Coimbatore, Madurai, Palayamkottai, and Senkottai by referring to remarks of William Wilson Hunter ([WWH], 1886; Indian Civil Servant; editor and compiler of the multi-volume Imperial Gazetteer of India), Richard Strachey (1887, Scientific Adviser to the colonial rulers of India and who was instrumental for the creation of the Indian Meteorological Department), and Henry Francis Blanford (1889, the first meteorologist of India [1875] stationed in Calcutta). Blanford is remembered for his description of the geology of the South-Arcot– Tiruchirapalli landscape, the Ariyalur-Group- Upper-Cretaceous sequence.
In the Famine and drought in Tamil society, ninth–nineteenth centuries chapter, S.J.S. speaks of monsoon-rain failures and consequent famines and droughts recorded in the Tamil-speaking Coromandel between the 6th and 13th centuries, synchronising those years with the Gregorian-calendar years (Table 3.1, p. 69). In page 70, S.J.S. alludes to slavery (bonded labour) as a social offshoot of droughts and famines. The term ‘slavery’ needs to be understood as a complex social phenomenon of interdependency and hierarchy in the Ancient and Middle-Age Southern India. It needs to be contextualised that every societal member was regulated by a level of inter-dependency and division of labour to forming a well-knit social fabric.
Some persons, in some instances, may have been ‘enslaved’– in its true meaning – but the paradox is that such persons also become prominently visible as temple patrons in a few other, concurrent-time inscriptions. Women committed to temple service (Devadasis) also performed societally high activities, such as sadir in temple halls. The reality of serfdom in the Middle-Age south-eastern India, especially in connection with what was probably the use of bonded labour in rice cultivation, from the 13th Century onwards, is suggested only in inscriptions, whereas in the Hindu religious literature, the same phenomenon is presented differently, as expression of devotion. S.J.S. uses several Tamil terms such as iraiyili with no explanation for a non-Tamil reader. The usage ‘iraiyili tax’ (page 71, line 13) was confusing to me. The term iraiyili is the compound noun combining irai (tax) and yil (exempt from). Therefore iraiyili refers to that farmland that is exempt from any tax. Therefore iraiyili tax is an oxymoron.
In pages 79–82, he clarifies how famines and consequent starvation troubled local residents and how that led to large-scale conversions to Christianity. His remark (pages 80–81):
The missionaries received liberal donations from France to carry on with their work during famine. Indeed, sometime such activities were held up due to (the) shortage of money flowing from Europe. … These details illustrate the role of the missionaries during famine who brought about conversions in a peaceful and persuasive manner by offering necessary materials and psychological assistance voluntarily to needy and helpless Hindus, especially the untouchables. One can also really appreciate the help rendered by them. Conversions also diminished considerably after the famine. The missionaries were, thus, undoubtedly a strong source of physical and psychological comfort to the needy during famines.
Pages 84–88 speak of how the grain scarcity was managed by the English-East-India Company in Fort St. George. This section refers to an early form of public-distribution system and employment for the able-bodied managed by the Board of Revenue and the Public-Works Department, respectively. An intense famine described as the Great-Indian Famine hit India in 1875–1878. A series of crop failures in various parts of India led to starvation and spread of epidemics, resulting in human death toll in millions by 1899–1900 (Fieldhouse 1996). Pages 87–88 include details of Report of the Indian Famine Commission (Starchey et al., 1880) signed by the members of the commission: Richard Strachey, James Caird (Scottish Agriculturist), Henry Stewart Cunningham (Advocate-General in Madras), Henry E. Sullivan (Madras Civil Service), James Braithwaite Peile (Bombay Civil Service).
Overall, S.J.S. has made a sincere effort to document many pertinent details, although many gaps and weaknesses exist, some of which have been highlighted in this review. Importantly I felt that a clear synthesis was absent. The major strength of S.J.S.’s History of the Climate Change on the Coromandel Coast is its comprehensive list of references, which should be useful to many a scientist and science historian of southern India, and perhaps elsewhere, who would be enthusiastic on exploring historical details of climate and its patterns of change in southern India.
* History of the climate change on the Coromandel Coast (Ninth-Nineteenth Centuries) by S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Manohar Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi, 2023, Pages 217, INR 4,099.
