Rock anthems: Check out the tiny tales told by south India's ancient ‘hero stones'

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

How do we honour our dead? Around the world, and through history, the answers have varied. An 18th-century hero stone from Tiruppur, depicting a man and three women believed to be from the same family. Most hero stones pay tribute to people who died protecting cattle, or communal land.
The earliest signs we know of involve fragments of petals found at gravesites in a cave in Israel, dating to over 13,000 years ago. Stone memorials, from little cairns across Europe to the dolmens shaped like huts spread across peninsular India, date to between 8000 and 3000 BCE. These would evolve, over time, into crypts, memorial plaques, commemorative busts, tombstones.
Amid this timeline, about 2,300 years ago, a new kind of memorial began to dot the ancient Tamil-speaking landscape, appearing in parts of modern-day Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry, Kerala, Karnataka, and as far as Lakshadweep and Sri Lanka.
They were called nadukkal, or hero stones.
Hundreds of these still stand, cared for, in many cases, by the descendants of the local villagers who erected them. New efforts by the Tamil Nadu government and NGOs such as the Yaakkai Heritage Trust are now tracking and geotagging these tiny memorials, aiming to document when they were built, and why.
An 11th-century stone erected by a man in memory of his father, who died in an encounter with a tiger, in Salem.
Most often, it turns out, the tribute was prompted by a heroic sacrifice made to protect cattle or land. Sometimes, a hero stone is dedicated to a person who fought off wild animals, to protect others or to protect livestock. Often, it memorialises a brave man; sometimes it is a woman or even a family. There are some dark tales here too; the women memorialised were typically widows who committed sati, immolating themselves on their husband's funeral pyre.
In rare instances, there have also been hero stones erected for a dog, elephant or even an alert rooster. In one instance, a hero stone was erected in honour of a selfless thief. (Read on for more on this.)
'What is most interesting about these memorials is that they honoured not a king or deity but a common person, and were most often erected by a family member of the deceased or by grateful villagers. This tells us a lot about the nature of the society of the time,' says K Rajan, an archaeologist and research advisor to the state government's Tamil Nadu Institute of Archaeology and Museology.
These were communities where the collective good defined morality, pride, honour and individual actions. 'All hero stones would traditionally have been visited on feast days and decorated with peacock feathers,' Rajan says, 'with offerings of toddy left nearby, or animals sacrificed at the spot in tribute.'
An intricate stone memorialising several warriors, discovered in Mysuru, Karnataka.
Memory maps
Amid efforts to document these markers, evocative details are emerging. A Sangam-era memorial erected in the 3rd century BCE in Dindigul district, for instance, holds an inscription now partially worn away. What is left declares that a warrior is buried 'under a jackfruit tree'.
A 4th-century CE tribute in Villupuram holds a faint etching of a rooster, to commemorate a presumably beloved bird killed in a cock fight.
A rare 6th-century CE one unearthed in Kallakurichi pays tribute, unusually, to a thief. It bears the traditional iconography — of a male figure wielding a bow in one hand and a knife in the other — but the citation honours Cami, who stole away to a neighbouring village under cover of night, hoping to return with stolen cattle to help his starving village.
A 12th-century stone found in Madurai, showing a warrior with a garland on his chest, denoting victory.
Protect and serve
Hero stones throw light on the virtues and values of a society, historians Basith Assarani and K Murugan, professors of history at Islamiah College write, in an essay published in the book Research Developments in Arts and Social Studies Vol. 2 (2022).
Interestingly, the memorials appear to have been a vital part of the cultural landscape. Seminal Sangam-era texts offer notes on these stones and how to erect them.
These memorials marked a shift, Assarani and Murugan write, from megalithic communal burials to a culture that honoured individual achievements, and from ancestral veneration to hero worship. A key aspect driving this shift, they posit, would have been the rise of local chiefdoms, and the vital role played by ancient warriors in protecting the shared assets of the community.
Part of a 16th-century stone found in Erode, depicting a woman's hand adorned with a bracelet, holding a lemon. There are some dark tales here too; many stones erected in honour of women memorialised instances of sati.
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The earliest known hero stones date to the the 3rd century BCE. Four have been found in Theni district, on the banks of the river Vaigai. Each is 3 ft high, with carvings etched on dark stone detailing cattle raids and burial urns.
Over the next 800 years, the memorials would become rather common. In his book A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (2016), historian Upinder Singh notes that the largest-known concentration is in the Kongu region of Karnataka: over 2,650 hero stones, some dating to the 5th century CE.
Most of these tributes are made using local stone (as opposed to ornamental rocks such as marble or granite).
The early carvings contained no people. 'They depicted shields and swords, bows and arrows, and cattle. Later ones depict rural landscapes and villages. By the 6th century, human figures make an appearance,' Rajan says. 'After the 10th century, these tributes began to be erected not just for local heroes but for revered ascetics too.'
Interestingly, the inscriptions offer telling reminders of how differently language evolved, at the grassroot level, says Sudhakar Nalliyappan, president of the NGO Yaakkai. The little monuments record, for instance, the shift from Brahmi to Vatteluttu to the modern Tamizh script by the 9th century CE, in a period when government inscriptions evolved from Prakrit to Sanskrit to Tamizhi.
Elaborately carved hero stones found in Kutchh, Gujarat.
By the colonial period, the tradition of hero stones was fading. This decline coincided with the centralisation of princely rule, firmer borders and a rapidly changing economy, Rajan says.
If you happen to see one today, a remnant from this long-gone era, you can be sure you are standing where a hero once died, or lived, or at the boundary of his village. Some stones were lovingly placed under a tree, or inside a temple. So be sure to look there too.
A set of unusual 16th-century stones in Coimbatore serves as a sort of log of brave villagers.
'If you see any on your travels, do report them to us,' says Nalliyappan. 'As we build our repository, each new stone we find often guides us to more.'
Every hero, after all, deserves to be remembered.