A group of archaeological enthusiasts recently discovered portions of stone structures called 'thoombus', which were estimated to be around 1,000 years old, near Udumalpet in Tiruppur district.
The team from Virarajendran Archaeological and Historical Research Centre discovered the structures during a field survey at Vadaputhinatham village near Udumalpet on November 12, said the Centre’s director S. Ravikumar. These were found near Periyakulam, a tank situated near the Thirumoorthy hills.
The two structures had Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi sculpted on them respectively. Both the structures had a hole with a diameter of 18 cm on its back. Out of these, the structure with Lord Ganesh was around 140 cm tall and had four lines of inscriptions in the Grantha script. The team sought the assistance of historian Y. Subbarayalu to decipher the script, Mr. Ravikumar said. The inscription, which was incomplete, read that the land irrigated by the tank remained wet.
Based on the Grantha script, Mr. Subbarayalu estimated that the structure might have been installed at 1000 CE, according to Mr. Ravikumar. He added that these stone structures must have been a part of ‘thoombus’, which were used as sluice gates to open and close the water flow from a tank to a canal for irrigating the agricultural lands.
“Such ‘thoombus’ with Grantha script inscriptions were earlier found only in Pudukkottai district,” he said, adding that this could be the first such discovery in Kongu region. The other structure with Goddess Lakshmi sculpted on it was around 70 cm tall and had no inscriptions, he added.
