131–140 of 143 posts
As a Tamil, I am surprised by so many such things that I come across about our ancestors. No wonder we take a lot of pride in our culture, sometimes to the extreme.
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A word can have more than one meanings. From https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ascribe&oq=define%3A... 3. a pointed instrument used for making marks on wood, bricks, etc., to guide a saw or in signwriting.
A word can have more than one meanings Lies spread by Satanist band. 3. a pointed instrument used for making [...] Communist dictionary.
- Someone misinterprets it as an honest mistake and tries to explain things
- You take on a condescending tone attempting to ^educate^ this obviously clueless person who doesn't know what word they ought to be using
- Someone patiently points out that it is you who is wrong
- You now use humour and pretend to be dismissive (instead of either not saying anything or acknowledging that yes, you did learn something new).
Bravo! Now everyone knows just how witty and smart you can be!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A word can have more than one meanings Lies spread by Satanist band. 3. a pointed instrument used for making [...] Communist dictionary.
- You make a snide comment - Someone misinterprets it as an honest mistake and tries to explain things - You take on a condescending tone attempting to ^educate^ this obviously clueless person who doesn't know what word they ought to be using - Someone patiently points out that it is you who is wrong - You now use humour and pretend to be dismissive (instead of either not saying anything or acknowledging that yes, yo…
The name of the ship's owner (mohayideen) is Arabic, transliterated into Tamil script. There is a well known history of the Arab trade network throughout Southeast Asia but it's fascinating that this artifact represents a fusion of Arab and Tamil culture. It makes me ponder whether the owner of the ship was himself cross cultural. The Arab presence in Southern India actually predates the advent of Islam, so even it's…
Very good point. There was also significant foreign trade between Egypt, Arabia, and India/Pakistan going back at least 4000 years, so your conjecture makes a lot of sense. Edit: I followed the footnote to vol 1 of the NZ Journal of Science where the suggest a Portuguese origin, presumably because of Portuguese saying prowess. In fact of course Tamil Nadu was an initial colonization point of many European invaders, a…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_inscriptions_in_the_Mala...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very good point. There was also significant foreign trade between Egypt, Arabia, and India/Pakistan going back at least 4000 years, so your conjecture makes a lot of sense. Edit: I followed the footnote to vol 1 of the NZ Journal of Science where the suggest a Portuguese origin, presumably because of Portuguese saying prowess. In fact of course Tamil Nadu was an initial colonization point of many European invaders, a…
I would just add that Tamils were a sailing nation with trade links in Southeast Asia well before European colonization - as is clearly evident in their cultural influence on and from Southeast Asia [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_inscriptions_in_the_Mala...
As a Tamil, I am surprised by so many such things that I come across about our ancestors. No wonder we take a lot of pride in our culture, sometimes to the extreme.
You may be interested to know that the word 'Coromandel' is a anglicized corruption of the 'Chola mandalam'. The Cholas had a sea empire that stretched all the way up to Vietnam. You probably know that there are Hindu temples in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Wherever the Cholas landed they set up a temple with a local caretaker who later grew in power.
Interesting. I've heard a different version when I studied in South India, that Coromandel [1] is the anglicized version of karu manal (mannal?) meaning black sand - because there are beaches in the Coromandel Coast that have black (and also red and other color) sand. E.g. At Kanyakumari a.k.a Cape Comorin, the southernmost tip of India, you could buy small plastic bags with multi-colored sand as a souvenir. I remember at least black, normal light brown, red and purple colors.
[[1] Update: The Wikipedia article says what you say about the name Coromandel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coromandel_Coast ]
Similarly, catamaran, I've heard, is from kattu maram - tied tree (trunks). Very stable boats, and that principle is now adopted in modern high-tech catamarans too. [2]
Once when on a school picnic on that coast, I asked for and got a ride on a catamaran of the local fishermen. We went out quite a way to sea, for maybe half an hour or more. I was sitting on one of the logs in the front, with my legs nearly up to the waist, in the sea. Could feel the water rushing past my legs. Good fun.
[2]:
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>Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. True :) Hadn't remembered this for some years, but your point above reminded me of it: There is a temple in Madurai (Tamil Nadu), or maybe another city in Tamil Nadu (which has tons of temples), where on the tower (gopuram) there are one or more carvings of a man (only the face) with a hat - like a Western hat. Had seen it as a kid when we went on a tour of South India. I remember…
That reminds of the legend of the horsemen statue on the island of Corvo in the Azores. Purportedly the statue looked to be dressed in a Moorish style. Besides that, there's plenty of evidence of pre-Portuguese presence in the Azores. There are theories that everyone from the Phoenicians to the Greeks to the Chinese discovered the island before Portugal did.
with a sharp scribe That sounds incredibly unwieldy.
Interesting. There has to be more evidence of other nations discovering Australia and New Zealand before the ones mentioned in our history books. Nearer to me, the Tiwi islands just off the coast of North Australia have unearthed jade figurines and artifacts that seem to originate from China or another Asian country, which date back to before the time of Captain Cook. Update: Article on early Chinese explorers reachi…
> Article on early Chinese explorers reaching Australia a long time before Dutch or English explorers - http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982893.h... . The conclusions in that article are exceptionally controversial. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies > Within the academic world, the book (and Menzies' "1421 hypothesis") is dismissed by sinologists and professional historians.[29][30…
[0] - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-10/old-chinese-coin-found...
Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. A really interesting one is the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head[2], a part of a terracotta figurine that was found in a pre-Columbian site in Mexico that is speculated to have Roman origin. Learning more about this is actually kind of hard. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of pseudoarchaeology concerning pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-…