: Camanda Curumba Prabhu #IndiaNEWS #Panorama The reference to Camanda Curumba Prabhu is found in Mackenzie manuscripts deposited in the Madras College Library TENSING RODRIGUES Today we launch

Camanda Curumba Prabhu #IndiaNEWS #Panorama
The reference to Camanda Curumba Prabhu is found in Mackenzie manuscripts deposited in the Madras College Library

TENSING RODRIGUES

Today we launch ourselves on a practically clueless search. We know nothing more about Camanda Curumba Prabhu than a mere mention in some old texts like Mackenzie Papers and Madras District Manual; we are not even sure that the name is correct. But the little that these sources say about him is more than sufficient to whet our appetite to know more about the man and probe into our deep time ancestry.

Mackenzie Collection forms a part of “one of the most wide-ranging collections ever to reach the Library of the East India Company???. [Blake, 1991: Colin Mackenzie: Collector Extraordinary, in The British Library Journal, Volume 17, Number 2, 128]

It consists of manuscripts, translations, plans, and drawings collected by Colin Mackenzie during his 38 years in India, first as an officer of the Madras Engineers, and then as the Surveyor-General of India. According to a statement drawn up in 1822 by Horace Hayman Wilson the collection contains 1,568 literary manuscripts, a further 2,070 local tracts, 8,076 inscriptions, and 2,159 translations, plus seventy-nine plans, 2,630 drawings, 6,218 coins, and 146 images and other antiquities. It is considered to be the most extensive and the most valuable collection of historical documents relative to India that ever was made by any individual in Europe or in Asia. For our good fortune, almost all the manuscripts are available somewhere or the other, except for his two-volume book on the war with Tipu Sultan. Many of the manuscripts are Mackenzie’s own notes on things he saw or heard or was told about; others could be texts in local languages he collected.

The reference to Camanda Curumba Prabhu is found in Mackenzie manuscripts deposited in the Madras College Library. Section 7 of Manuscript Book Number 14, Countermark 768, titled ‘Ancient History Of Tondamandalam, And Its Earlier Inhabitants, Called Vedars And Curumbars’, begins as follows: “After the deluge the country was a vast forest, inhabited by wild beasts. A wild race of men arose; and, destroying the wild beasts, dwelt in certain districts. There were then, according to tradition, no forts, only huts, no kings, no religion, no civilisation, no books; men were naked savages: no marriage institutions. Many years after, the Curumbars arose in the Carnata country: they had a certain kind of religion; they were murderers. They derived the name of Curumbar from their cruelty. Some of them spread into the Dravida Desam, as far as the Tondamandala country. They chose a man who had some knowledge of books, who was chief of the Dravida country, and was called Camanda Curumba Prabhu, and Pulal Raja; he built a fort in Puralur.