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Mirror marvelKerala'straditionalAranmulamirrorgetspatentprotectionwitha GeographicalIndicationtag

By DR SHARADASRINIVASAN

THE little villageof Aranmula is

one place whichlives up to thehype of Keralatourism's salespitch of 'God'sOwn Country'.Located on the

banks of the languid river Pampa,Aranmula comes alive in a frenzy ofsp~ctacular snake-boat races and wa-ter carnivals during Onam religiousfestivities. Aranmula is also home to awaning handicraft tradition which is atechnological marvel in its own right.

The Aranmula kannadi is an ex-

traordinary metal mirror which wasone ofthe eight auspicious articles orashtamangalyam set that made up abride's wedding trousseau. The manu-facture of the Aranmula kannadi hasbeen a zealously guarded secret of allbut a handful of surviving artisansknown as acharis.

The Centre has patented theAranmula mirror with the Geographi-cal Indication tag. The tag identifiesgoods that have originated or aremanufactured in a particular region,and the quality of which is attributable66 IIw;m'.'lomi1 SEPT 12,2004

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to their geographical origin. Darjeelingtea, Pochampalli saris, Basmati rice andMysore silks are some of the otherproducts that have earned the tag.

Local legends link the history ofAranmula mirror to the Parthasarathytemple of Lord Krishna at Aranmula.One lively story about the origins ofthe Aranmula metal mirror is that theRaja of Aranmula had threatened toevict some bronze craftsmen, who aresaid to have migrated from Tamil

ZEALOUSLYGUARDEDSECRET:Artisans

eventodayusetraditional'low-tech'methodsto producea sophisticatedmetallurgicalendproduct

Nadu to make artifacts for theParthasarathy temple. In an interest-ing twist, it was a widow, ParvatiAmmal, who came to their rescue asshe dreamt that Lord Parthasarathy orKrishna had revealed the secret ofmaking an unusual reflecting metal.Not only was the Raja placated by acrown made of this material, but healso exhorted the artisans to make,from this alloy dreamt up by thewidow, the valkannadi or mirrors forthe auspicious ashtamangalyam wed-ding sets of brides-to-be. A large oldmetal mirror is also installed in a sub-

sidiary shrine in a Bhagavati templecomplex in Ernakulam where it is wor-shipped as a form of the goddess.

What is marvellous about the

Aranmula mirror is that merely by us-ing traditional 'low-tech' methods andmaterials a rather sophisticated 'l1igh-tech' metallurgical end product isachieved. The metallurgical investiga-tions that I had made of various frag-ments of the mirror alloys establishedthat these were uniquely made of a bi-nary alloy of copper with 33 per centtin. It is this composition which yieldsproperties ideally suited for a mirror,since it is a hard, stable and silverycompound which can therefore be pol-ished to a mirror finish.

The entire mirror manufacturingprocess seems to be geared at skilfullyoptimising the presence of this alloymix at non-equilibrium room tem-peratures. While this silvery metallicalloy shatters quite easily like glass,this brittleness is offset by casting avery thin blank, no more than 3 mmthick, which is re-inforced by mount-ing it with resin on a wooden mountfor the polishing process.

For the casting process, a cleverlymade jug-shaped crucible-cum-mouldof clay is used: the lower portion con-sists of a two-piece clay mould whichis connected to the neck consisting ofa hollow cup wherein the metal piecesto be cast are placed. This sealed claycrucible-cum-mould is heated neck

down on a hearth, whereby the metalmelts in the neck, and then the jug-

Sands of timeBy FARWAIMAM AU

documenting the finds which include black and red wareand painted pot shards.

The archaeologists are more excited by the prospect ofdiscovering habitation sites close by. "If a burial ground ispresent, it is logical that a habitation site is not too far away,"said Satyamurthy. The focus of the current excavations is toarrive at the cultural sequence of the civilisation.

"The date of Adichanallur may even be earlier than thatofMangadu [a civilisation discovered near the AshtamudiLake in Kollam district, Kerala], that is, prior to 1000 BC,"says Satyamurthy. This could make it the missing link in thejigsaw detailing the rise and decline of one of the earliest

Tamil civilisations.The site was first excavated in 1900

by British archaeologist Alexander Rea,who said it was "the most extensive pre-historic site as yet discovered in south-ern India". Rea recorded thousands of

objects found there including finely-made pottery, iron implements, weap-ons and ornaments of gold diadems,bronze, stone beads and bones. "If hisaim was to record that an ancient Tamil

civilisation existed," said Satyamurthy,"ours is to establish the sequence ofevents that typified that civilisation andfix a date for the same."

At the end of a dusty track, 24 km from Tirunelveli inTamil Nadu, men dig trenches under a blistering sun.

What resembles a construction site is actually an archaeo-logical excavation site of an urn burial ground, which datesto 1000 BC.Archaeologists have already found 40 urns atthe 114-acre Adichanallur site. "It is the most exciting findin recent archaeological history," said T. Satyamurthy, su-perintending archaeologist and direc-tor of the site.

Urn burial is typical of megalithicculture. As per custom, after cremation,the bones were placed in an urn and itsmouth was sealed with another urn.

The 'twin-pots' retrieved atAdichanallur correspond to descrip-tions of the ritual found in Tamil

Sangam literature. Some urns havebeen unearthed with small pots strungaround them. "These could have con-

tained the personal belongings ofthedead person," said Satyamurthy. Heand his IS-member team are presently

shaped crucible-cum-mould is tippedover so that the molten metal flowsinto the narrow gap between the ovaltwo-piece mould so that it solidifiesinto thin oval metal blank. The cast

blank, which is retrieved by breakingthe mould, is mounted onto a woodenhandle and polished over several dayswith hessian and velvet cloth to get amirror finish. The hard, powderedmirror alloy is itself used to give themirror a final polish.

There are several Indian sculpturalI depictions such as the mediaeval

Hoysala dancing girls from Karnatakaholding mirrors. Such mirrors re-semble the thick wooden polishingboard with a rear handle fromAranmula onto which the mirror

blank is affixed with resin for polish-ing. This could have itselfbeen used asa finished mirror as an alternative tothe current traditional practice ofmounting the mirror blank into abrass frame.

There is other evidence of the tech-nological distinctiveness of theAranmula mirrors. Whereas bronzemirrors with a high tin content were

EXCITINGFIND:ASl'sT.Satyamurthy(left) examinesa burialurnat theAdichanallursite

used widely in China and also in theRoman world, these were generallycast with around 25 per cent tin withup to 10 per cent lead. Although theaddition oflead would have served toreduce the brittleness of cast bronzes

with over 20 per cent tin, lead being anopaque material that does not dissolvein copper, such mirrors probably werenot as reflective as the unleaded alloyused for the Aranmula mirrors.

Rather, the Aranmula high-tindelta metal mirror seems to draw from

long standing Indian familiarity withmaking artifacts of unleaded binaryhigh-tin bronze which has been hith-erto little known. I have undertaken

metallurgical investigations on vesselsfrom Iron Age burials and megalithssuch as from the Nilgiris andAdichanallur in Tamil Nadu datable to

the early to mid 1stmillennium BC and

I found these to be of wrought andquenched high-tin beta bronze witharound 23 per cent tin, which rankamong the earliest such alloys knownin the world. These specialised alloyscan be hot forged and when quenchedor cooled in water they have improvedproperties of golden lustre, musicalproperties, toughness and corrosionresistance. Such vessels and cymbalsare still made in Kerala.

After all these years the burial com-plex at Adichanallur now being exca-vated has yielded pottery and findswhich are dated to 1000 BC (box). It isinteresting that one excavation reporton Mohenjodaro (2500 BC) listed twounleaded bronze samples of 22 percent and 26 per cent tin, althoughwithout metallography one can't tell ifthese were accidentally or intention-ally alloyed. Thus it is possible that theAranmula mirror-making processevolved out of longstanding indig-enous metallurgical traditions.

(Dr Sharada Srinivasan has wonan award ITom the Indian Founda-tion for Arts (IFA) for her work indocumenting Indian metal crafts.)

SEPT 12, 2004 1I~m\"/i!i1!1 67