FLOODS AND WAVES

(From F&F#53 May 2005)

A random selection of short stories about floods and waves from some of the parts of the world affected by the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami.

The ANDAMAN ISLANDS are an archipelago of small, low lying islands in the Bay of Bengal between India (which they are politically part of) and Thailand. We start with their variation on the worldwide flood theme. Many historians and archaeologists have tried, and continue to try, to prove the truth of one huge global catastrophe and to find its location. The more they do so the more possibilities we are faced with. Perhaps there never was just one source for the story but many similar events over the thousands of years of humankind’s evolution. Boxing Day’s was just the latest.

Some time after their creation mankind grew disobedient. This angered Puluga, the Creator, so he sent a flood which covered the whole land except for Saddle Peak where he himself lived. Of all creatures in the world the only survivors were two men and two women who were lucky enough to be in a canoe when the flood came.

After a long while the waters receded and the four people landed. Although they were safe and on dry land they found themselves in a dreadful plight on the naked earth with no plants or animals.

Puluga took pity on them and recreated birds and animals for their use, but the world was still damp and cold and, worst of all, without fire. To help them the ghost of one of their friends took the form of a kingfisher and tried to steal a brand from Puluga's fire, but as he soared up into the sky he accidentally dropped it and it fell on the Creator. Furious, Puluga picked up the brand and hurled it at the bird, but it missed and landed near to where the four flood survivors were seated. They quickly took it and carefully lit a fire.

After they had warmed themselves they began to murmur against the Creator. They complained about the way they had been treated and even plotted to murder Puluga. However, the Creator warned them away from such rash action explaining that they had brought the flood upon themselves by their disobedience and that another such offence would likewise be met with punishment.

That was the last time the Creator spoke with men face to face

INDONESIA comprises over 13,000 islands but the one which was most affected by the Boxing Day tsunami was Sumatra. The ancestors of the present inhabitants probably arrived from Asia before BCE1000. The majority religion was Hindu then Buddhist and more recently there is a Muslim majority. The whole area was squabbled over by the Dutch, the Portuguese and the British before becoming independent. After independence the Indonesian government forcibly annexed more islands and peoples, hence the ‘difficulties’ in the affected area of Aceh where an insurrection or rebellion (or is it a resistance movement?) has been going on for years. The Indonesian language is basically the same as Malay except that it is based on Dutch phonetics rather than English.

From Nias (an island west of Sumatra) which was severally damaged by a major after-shock:

The mountains were quarrelling over which of them was the highest. To bring an end to the argument the great ancestor, Baluga Luomewona, threw a comb into the sea. It turned into a giant crab which stopped up the ocean's outlet sluices. The water gradually rose until it covered all the mountain tops bar the two or three tallest.

Now they knew the answer to their argument. The people who had escaped to these mountains with their cattle were the only ones who survived.

From Engano (another island west of Sumatra):

One day the tide rose so high that it flooded over all the island. Everyone was drowned except for one woman who survived because her hair got caught in a thorny tree as she drifted along on the tide. This kept her afloat.

When the flood subsided, she came down from the tree and found herself alone. Hungry, she searched for food and, finding none inland, she went to the beach hoping to catch a fish.

She found a fish, but it flapped away and hid in one of the corpses left by the flood. She picked up a stone and hit the corpse but again, the fish escaped and headed inland. She followed and cornered the fish but it turned into a living man.

He told her that he had returned to life as a consequence of somebody knocking on his dead body. The woman told him what she had done so they went back to the beach and restored the population by knocking on the bodies of all the drowned people.

SRI LANKA (formerly Ceylon) The setting for the saga of Rama and Sita which dramatises the various settlements of the island by peoples from the mainland of India. In about the 5th century BCE the island was settled by Sinhalese from northern India who established a Buddhist kingdom. From about the 12th century CE Tamils from southern India settled in the north of the island and founded a Hindu kingdom. In more modern times there were Portuguese, Dutch and then British rulers. Curry and mulligatawny are Tamil words.
The greatest of all stories about watery catastrophes is the one we in the west know from the Bible and storytellers also know from Gilgamesh and Greek mythology. It is a worldwide tale. Here is a Hindu version from the Mahabharata.

Manu was the great Rishi, equal unto Brahma in glory. He practised austerity in the great forest for ten thousand years, standing on one leg with arm upraised.

One day a tiny fish jumped out of the stream and begged for Manu’s protection against the larger fish which would eat it. Manu placed the fish in an earthenware jar and tended it carefully until it outgrew the jar, so he put it in a tank. It continued to grow until it had outgrown the tank too and it pleaded with Manu to place it in the Ganges, the favourite spouse of the ocean. But there came a time when, again, the fish pleaded with Manu “Take me to the ocean for now I cannot turn about in the Ganges.

When the fish was safe in the vastness of the ocean it spoke to Manu and said “You must know that the time for purging is at hand. To escape you must build an ark and furnish it with a long rope. You must also take into it all the seeds of the earth.”

Manu did as he was told and was soon adrift on the waters. The fish appeared, as large as an island, and Manu fastened the ark to its horns. ‘There was water everywhere and the waters covered the heavens and the firmament also…’

After many years the fish towed the ark to the highest peak of the Himavat which is still called Naubandhana (the harbour) and it settled there.

Again the fish spoke “I am Brahma, the lord of all creatures and none is greater then me. I have saved you from the cataclysm and now you must create again all beings in their correct order.”

In another version of the above story the ’Noah’ figure is a king called Satyavrata and the fish a manifestation of the god Vishnu (the preserver to Brahma’s creator).

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF TIME

Although in recent months we have been thinking of the waters as the destroyer and taker of life in many cultures they are also the source from which life begins. (Humankind must have grasped instinctively what we have since discovered of evolution and had obviously experienced the breaking of a woman’s waters before she gives birth.) Here is a Hindu account of the creation:

At first the Universe was Nothing. There was no sky, nor earth, nor air. Deep in this nothingness the Spirit resolved “Let me be” and became active. From the activity smoke was produced and it became fire. The fire became rays of energy which formed the sea. A magical formula was created and it became Prajapati.

When Prajapati arose from the waters he cried “For what purpose have I been born if there is nothing here?”

He wept. The tears that fell into the waters became the land and those he wiped away became air. Those he flicked upwards became the sky. Then Prajapati cast off his first body and it became darkness; he created men and cast off his new body and it became moonlight. He created the seasons and cast off his body, and it became twilight. He created gods and cast off his body, and it became day.

Then Prajapati created death, a devourer of creatures…

A Hindu vision of the end of time... for now.

At the end of the universe the sun and the moon will shine no more and all will become dark. Shiva will begin his dance of destruction to the music of a drum. He will generate the fire of eternal time which will blaze throughout the universe. The fire will burn for one hundred celestial years, destroying all creatures. From Shiva’s hair will pour torrential rain for a further one hundred celestial years and all the land will be inundated. The universe will fill with water and be swept by howling winds. Then will follow the long, silent night which precedes the next cycle of creation.

A lovely piece of poetic thought but also, surely, a description of an earthly catastrophe—a volcanic eruption and tsunami?

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