Shree Ramsetu (Tamil: ஆதாம் பாலம் āthām pālam),
also known as Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu
(Tamil: இராமர் பா
லம் Rāmar pālam,
Hindi: रामसेतु, Sanskrit: रामसेतु,
Malayalam:രാമസേതു, rāmase
tu),
is a chain of limestone shoals, between Pamban Island,
also known asRameswaram Island, off the southeastern
coast of Tamil Nadu, India, and Mannar Island, off the northwestern coast
of Sri Lanka. Geological evidence suggests that this bridge is a former land connection between India and Sri Lanka.
The bridge is 18 miles (30 km) long and separates the Gulf of Mannar (southwest) from the Palk Strait (nor
theast). Some of the sandbanks are dry and the sea in the area is ve
ry shallow, being only 3 ft to 30 ft (1 m to 10 m) deep in places, which hinders navigation. It was reportedly passable on foot up to the 15th century until storms deepened the channel: temple records seem to say that Rama’s Bridge was completel
y above sea level until it broke in a cyclone in 1480 CE.
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Name
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From Ramayan, it is clear that this setu was built by Niel the Enggineer of Prabhu Shree Ram. The bridge was first mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana of Valmiki.The western world first encounters it in "historical works in the 9th century" by Ibn Khordadbeh in his Book of Roads and Kingdoms (ca. 850 CE), referring to it is Set Bandhai or "Bridge of the Sea". Later, Alberunidescribed it.
The name Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu (Sanskrit; setu: bridge) was given to th
is bridge of shoals in Rameshwaram, as Hindu legend identifies it with the bridge built by the Vanara (monkey-men) army ofRama , which he used to reach Lanka and rescue
his wife Sita from the Rakshasa king, Ravana, as stated in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana.
The sea separating India and Sri Lanka is called Set
husamudram "Sea of the Bridge". Maps prepared by a Dutch cartographer in 1747, available at the Tanjore Saraswathi Mahal Library show this area asRamancoil, a colloquial form of the Tamil Raman Kovil (Rama's Temple) Another map of Mogul India prepared by J. Rennel in 1788 retrieved from the same library called this area the area of the Rama Temple Many other maps in Schwartzberg's historical atlas and other sources call this area with various names like Koti, Sethubandha and Sethubandha Rameswaram along with others.Valmiki's Ramayana attributes the building of the bridge to Lord Rama in verse 2-22-76.
Shree Ramsetu starts as chain of shoals from the Dhanushkodi tip of India's Pamba
n Island and ends at Sri Lanka's Mannar Island. Pamban Island is semi-connected to the Indian ma
inland by 2 km longPamban Bridge. Mannar Island is connected to mainland Sri Lanka by a causeway. The border between India and Sri Lanka is said to pass across one of the shoals constituting one of the shortest land borders in the world. Shree Ramsetu's and neighbouring areas like Rameswaram, Dhanushkodi, Devipattinam and Thirupullani are mentioned in the context of various legends in Ramayana
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Transportation and navigation
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Pamban Island (Tamil Nadu, India) with its small port of Rameswaram is about 2 km from mainland India. ThePamban Bridge crossing the Pamban channel links Pamban Island with mainland India. It refers to both: a road bridge and a cantilever railway bridge. Small boats would go below the 2065 m long road bridge and the railway bridge would op
en up.
The problem in navigation exists because big ships can't travel in the shallow waters of the Pamban channel. Dredging in this channel would cost more than dredging a channel in the Rama Setu area, where the waters are comparatively deep and lesser earth would have to be dredged. Hence, in 2001, the Government of India approved a multi-million dollar Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project that aims to create a ship channel across the Palk Bay cutting across Rama Setu. Various organizations have opposed the project based o
n religious, economic and environmental grounds and have sought the implementation of one of the alternative alignments considered during the earlier stages of the discussion.
A ferry service linked Dhanushkodi in India withTalaimannar in Sri Lanka. The service was part of the Indo-Ceylon Railway service during the British Rule. One could buy a railway ticket from Chennai to Colombo, whereby people traveled by rail from Chennai to Pamban island, go by ferry to Talaimannar, and then go again by rail to Colombo. in 1964, a cyclone completely destroyed Dhanushkodi, a train about to enter the station, the tracks and the pier and heavily damaged the shores of Palk Bay and Palk Strait. Dhanushkodi was not rebuilt and the train thence finished at Rameswaram. There was a small ferry service from there to Talaimannar, but it has been suspended around 1982 because of the fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist LTTE.
Considerable diversity of opinion and confusion exists about the nature and origin of this structure. In the 19th century, there were two preval
ent theories explaining the structure. One considered it to be formed by a process of accretion and rising of the land, while the other surmised that it was formed by the breaking away of Sri Lanka from the Indian mainland. The friable calcerous ridges are broken into large rectangular blocks, which perhaps gave rise to the belief that the causeway is an artificial construction.
According to V. Ram Mohan of the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Studies of the University of Madras "reconstruction of the geological evolution of the island chain is a challenging task and has to be carried out based on circumstantial evidence". The lack of comprehensive field studies explains many of the uncertainties regarding the nature and origin of Shree Ramsetu, which essentially consists of a series of parallel ledges of sandstone and conglomerates that are hard at the surface and grows coarse and soft as it descend
s to sandy banks.
Studies have variously described the structure as a chain of shoals, coral reefs, a ridge formed in the region owing to thinning of the earth's crust, a double tombolo, a sand spit, or barrier islands. It has been reported that this bridge was formerly the world's largest tombolo before it was split into a chain of shoals by the rise in mean sea level few thousand years ago.
Based on satellite remote sensing data, but without actual field verification, Marine and Water Resources Group of Space Application Centre (SAC) of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) states that Shree Ramsetu comprises 103 small patch reefs lying in a linear pattern with reef crest (flattened, emergent – especially during low tides – or nearly emergent segment of a reef), sand cays (accumulations of loose coral sands and beach rock) and intermittent deep channels. The coral reefs are designated by the different studies variously as ribbon and atoll reefs.
The geological process that gave rise to this structure has also been attributed to crustal downwarping, block faulting, and mantle plume activity by one study while another theory attributes it to continuous sand deposition and the natural process of sedimentation leading to the formation of a chain of barrier islands related to rising sea levels.Another theory affirms that the origin and linearity of the Shree Ramsetu may be due to the old shoreline – implying that the two landmasses of India and Sri Lanka were once connected – from where coral reefs evolved.
Another study explains the origin the structure due to longshore drifting currents which moved in an anticlockwise direction in the north and clockwise direction in the south of Rameswaram and Talaimannar. The sand was supposedly dumped in a linear pattern along the current shadow zone between Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar with later accumulation of corals over these linear sand bodies. In a diametrically opposing view, another group of geologists propose crustal thinning theory, block faulting and a ridge formed in the region owing to thinning and asserts that development of this ridge augmented the coral growth in the region and in turn coral cover acted as a `sand trapper'.
The tombolo model affirms a constant sediment source and a strong unidirectional or bi-directional (monsoonal) longshore current.[citation needed] One study tentatively concludes that there is insufficient evidence to indicate eustatic emergence and that the raised reef in south India probably results from a local uplift. Other studies also conclude that during periods of lowered sea level over the last 100,000 years, Shree Ramsetu has provided an intermittent land connection between India and Sri Lanka, which according to famous ornithologists Sidney Dillon Ripley and Bruce Beehler supports thevicariance model for speciation in some birds of the Indian Subcontinent.
Tsunami expert Professor Tad S Murty has stated that Shree Ramsetu might have acted as a protection wall during the Indian Ocean Tsunami event in 2004, because of its elevation, and prevented damage to South Kerala. However he concedes that this view is not based on his own original research, nor is he aware of any such studies being carried out by anyone. While some geologists have the opine that this structure is man-made.Government of India, in an affidavit in theSupreme Court of India, said that there is no historical proof of the bridge being built by Ram.
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Age
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Geological Survey of India (GSI) carried out a special programme called “Project Rameswaram” that concluded that age data of corals indicate that the Rameswaram island has evolved since 125,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating of samples in this study suggests that the domain between Rameswaram and Talaimannar may have thus been exposed sometime between 18,000 and 7,000 years ago. Thermoluminescence dating by GSI concludes that the sand dunes of Dhanushkodi to Shree Ramsetu started forming only about 500–600 years ago.
Investigation by Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, led by Professor S.M. Ramasamy dates the structure to 3,500 years. In the same study, carbon dating of some ancient beaches between Thiruthuraipoondi and Kodiyakarai shows the Thiruthuraipoondi beach dates back to 6,000 years and Kodiyakarai around 1,100 years ago. Another study suggests that the appearance of the reefs and other evidence indicate their recency, and a coral sample gives a radiocarbon age of 4020±160 years B. P.
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Early surveys and dredging efforts
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Owing to shallow waters, Shree Ramsetu presents a formidable hindrance to navigation through the Palk strait. Though trade across the India-Sri Lanka divide has been active since at least the first millennium BCE, it has been limited to small boats and dinghies. Larger ocean-going vessels from the West have had to navigate around Sri Lanka to reach India's eastern coast. Eminent British geographer Major James Rennell, who surveyed the region as a young officer in the late eighteenth century, suggested that a "navigable passage could be maintained by dredging the strait of Ramisseram [sic]". However little notice was given to his proposal, perhaps because it came from "so young and unknown an officer", and the idea was only revived 60 years later.
In 1823, Sir Arthur Cotton (then an Ensign), was trusted with the responsibility of surveying thePamban channel, which separates the Indian mainland from the island of Rameswaram and forms the first link of Ram Setu. Geological evidence indicates that this was at one point bridged by a land connection, and some temple records suggest that the connection was broken by violent storms in 1480. Cotton suggested that the channel be dredged to enable passage of ships, but nothing was done till 1828, when some rocks were blasted and removed under the direction of Major Sim.
A more detailed marine survey of Ram Setu was undertaken in 1837 by Lieutenants F. T. Powell, Ethersey, Grieve and Christopher along with draughtsman Felix Jones, and operations to dredge the channel were recommenced the next year. However these, and subsequent efforts in the 19th century, did not succeed in keeping the passage navigable for any vessels except those with a light draft.
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Sethusamudram shipping canal project
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The government of India constituted nine committees before independence, and five committees since then to suggest alignments for a Sethusamudram canal project. Most of them suggested land-based passages across Rameswaram island and none suggested alignment across Shree Ramsetu.
In 2001, the Government of India approved a multi-million dollar Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project that aims to create a ship channel across the Palk Strait by dredging the shallow ocean floor near Dhanushkodi. The channel is expected to cut over 400 km (nearly 30 hours of shipping time) off the voyage around the island of Sri Lanka. This proposed channel's current alignment requires dredging through Rama's Bridge.
Political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)) and someHindu organizations oppose dredging through the shoal on religious grounds — Rama's Bridge being popularly identified as the causeway described in the Ramayana — and suggest using an alternate alignment for the channel that avoids damage to Shree Ramsetu. The state and central government have opposed such changes, with Union Shipping Minister T R Baalu, who belongs to theDravida Munnetra Kazhagam and a strong supporter of the project, saying the current proposal was well scrutinised for economic viability and environmental sustainability and that there were no other environmentally feasible alternatives.
Opposition to dredging through this causeway also stems from concerns over its impact on the area's ecology and marine wealth, potential loss of thorium deposits in the area, and increased risk of damage due to tsunamis.[44] Some organizations are completely opposing this project on economical and environmental grounds and claim proper scientific studies were not conducted before undertaking this project.
But, mysteriously the gadgets used were destroyed on their own as they were named as jay hanumanand were being used to destroy Hanuman's Lord's Setu, Shree Ramsetu.
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Saving Effects
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Due to presence of Shree Ramsetu, the Tsunami waves were not able to cross Sethusamudram shipping canal and hece South African countreis were saved. Still, Shree Ramsetu was as it is, with no damage to it. Also, the temple constructed by Shree Ram of Bhagwan Mahadev atRameshwaram was left undamaged by Tsunami. Isn't it enough to prove Holyness of it??
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Referance
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Ramayan & http://www.rense.com/general30/nasa.htm
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