Ecological Heritage and Sacred Sites of India

By  Chithra Madhavan Appar and Thirugnanasambandar, the two famous Nayanmars of the 7th century AD have sung the praise of Thayumanavar Swami of ‘Chirapalli’. Thiruchirapalli and its environs are home to many ancient religious places, of which the Thayumanavar Swami temple in Malaikottai (Rock Fort) is one. God Siva, the presiding deity of this temple, is worshipped as Thayumanavar Swami (and Matrubhuteshwarar in Samskrit). This deity has been praised in the Tamil verses of the Nayanmars and hence this temple is one among the 275 Padal Petra Sthalams. It is the sixth Padal Petra Sthalam in the erstwhile Chola country south of river Kaveri. Appar and Thirugnanasambandar, the two famous Nayanmars of the 7th century AD have sung the praise of Thayumanavar Swami of ‘Chirapalli’. The name Matrubhuteshwarar is connected with the Sthala Puranam of this temple. It is said that a lady named Ratnavati, who was a devotee of God Siva lived on the north bank of river Kaveri. When she was pregnant,

  by  Vinaya Kurtkoti In 1887, in a mistake in labelling herbarium sheets, plant species from the northern Western Ghats were misidentified. Recently a team of researchers set out to investigate the 180-year-old puzzle. This investigation led the team to discover an entirely new species, Croton chakrabartyi, and rediscover Croton gibsonianus, a previously misidentified plant species that occurs only in Maharashtra. As per the current study, Croton gibsonianus is the only tree exclusively endemic and restricted to Maharashtra. A population of around 50 trees of Croton gibsonianus survives on the Harishchandragad hill in Maharashtra. While working on a project to document Maharashtra’s endemic species, researchers from the Naoroji Godrej Centre for Plant Research (NGCPR) came across a unique tree that they had never seen before. After an eight-kilometre trek from Khireshwar to the Harishchandragad Hill in the northern Western Ghats, they saw a small population of 15-feet-high trees with

  by   Ranjan K. Panda The ability of rivers to sustain biodiversity and deliver ecosystem services is governed by the degree to which their natural flow regime and connectivity are maintained. No matter how one perceives a river, whether based on its existence, importance to human or key to progress, if rivers are destroyed, civilisations will perish. In India, dams are often symbols of development in the popular mind. It’s important to build public perceptions around the ecosystem values of rivers, writes Ranjan K. Panda in this commentary. The views in this commentary are that of the author. The other day I asked my friends on social media: What is that one word which comes to their mind when they see a river? Hundreds of them replied and almost everyone said they felt river means water, life. Many equated rivers with freedom, flow of life.  For many years I had been wondering if fellow human beings had completely distanced themselves from rivers. These responses disproved me to an

  by  Navina Jafa The hill of Kalka Devi in south Delhi is dotted with mythical tales and miraculous twists An old perception in the community history of Delhi is that the city has the protection of five Bhairavas, 22 Sufis, and two Goddesses — Yog Maya and Kalka Devi. Located on a hill in south Delhi, the Kalka Devi temple and its surrounding landscape curiously offer a template of syncretic culture for contemporary, cosmopolitan Delhi. There is the revered 13-14th century Sufi shrine of Hazrat Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlavi, the 20th century architectural wonder of the Lotus Temple of the Bahai faith, the ISKCON temple, and even an Ashokan edict of the 3rd century BC. Window into heritage Bashiruddin Ahmad’s  Waqyaat Darul Hukumat Dehli  records the intangible heritage of two fairs in Kalkaji Temple, located in Bahapur village, in the Hindu months of Chaitra (M arch-April)   and Ashvin (September- October)   when different communities actively participated and enjoyed performances of str

  By  Roopak Goswami The last time a species of the Georissa genus was discovered in India was 170 years ago in 1851 Georissa  mawsmaiensis, discovered by Nipu Kumar Das and NA Aravind A micro snail species named  Georissa mawsmaiensis  has recently been discovered from Mawsmai, a limestone cave in Meghalaya, 170 years after the last such discovery was made.  It was in 1851 that  Georissa saritta , a member of the same genus as the latest find, was collected and described from the Musmai (Mawsmai today) valley near Cherrapunjee by WH Benson. The discovery this time has been reported in the  Journal of Conchology . The researchers involved in the discovery are Nipu Kumar Das and NA Aravind of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. The researchers, however, worry that the high tourist influx to the cave will be a major threat to the species: The Mawsmai cave is one of the major tourist attractions in Meghalaya. Some changes have been made to incr