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| A ruined karppam built by Hindus that now lays forgotten in Mpumalanga. |
The best proof of this, say some, are a beautifully stacked stone
edifice on and below Mpumalanga’s escarpment.
Hindus polled by Witness Wheels agree the ancient
monument at Blouboskraal river looks very much like the left half of the Hindu
aum sign.
Mainstream archaeologists have, however, long been hesitant to refer
to the artistically scalloped stone walls as anything other than a cattle
“kraal”.
One expert who harboured no doubts that ruins and shrines along
Mpumalanga’s escarpment were built by Indians is contentious Cape Town historian
and linquist Doctor Cyril Hromnik.
“It is not an aum sign but a karppam, the sanctum of a temple,” he
informed Witness Wheels.
Hromnik achieved notoriety in the 1980s when he stated that Tamils
from south India, called Komatis, had settled in Mpumalanga more than 2 000
years ago to mine gold. Hromnik said the Komatis built shrines, temples,
astronomical observatories and stone-walled sacred precincts, and left their
name on places like Komatipoort as well as their genes in the Quena descendants
from intermarriages with the Kung, or Bushmen women.
“The early 13th century is when the earliest Nguni arrived south of
the Limpopo. By that time the Indian trade in southern Africa was almost 2 000
years old, and their Otentottu [mixed] Quena progeny [called Hottentot by the
Dutch and misnamed Khoehhoe by the ideological archaeology and history
academics] were the owners of this land,” stated Hromnik.
Apartheid archeology,
already strained to breaking point to defend the view that whites and blacks had
arrived in the same era in South Africa, but from different directions, would
have none of Hromnik’s blunt statement. They read this to mean that actually, it
was Indians who first colonised southern Africa.
But Hromnik speaks
about gold prospecting, mining and intermarriages with the local Kung. “Indians
never colonised anybody, but their quest for gold spurred trade and
technological progress in many parts of the world, including southern Africa,”
he said.
Academic opposition against these views are slowly waning. The
Mapungubwe website these days says of the people who built the ancient kingdom:
“Unfortunately, the inhabitants’ identity remains a mystery since this part of
history goes back before the written record and no known oral traditions can be
recorded over a period of a thousand years, therefore the inhabitants are merely
known as the ‘Mapungubweans’. No Mapungubweans ever existed, says Dr. Hromnik.
Only Dravidian Indians and the Otentottu-Quena were involved in the development
of the religious Mapungubwe hill complex.
And the University of Pretoria, which had for decades hidden in a
drawer the tiny gold rhino that provided shining, symbolic proof of an ancient
Indo-Quena civilisation before Verwoerd’s apartheid, now states that small, red
Indian trade beads are “the chief feature of the many hundreds of thousands of
beads in its Mapungubwe collection”.
The karppam stone structure at Blouboskraal just off the
Schoemanskloof N4 road at Blouboskraal river requires either forking out R51 per
car at SA’s second most expensive toll gate at Machadodorp, or following the GPS
prompts to drive SA’s worst — and most scenic — alternative route along the
Elandsriver.
This route is a few kilometres shorter, but can only to be driven
in a high bakkie as it is not a road, but a trail that was simply graded down
the area’s steep hillsides. While a 4x2 will get one down, difflock at least
will be needed to get back up. Another alternative is to take the Farrefontein
road, which adds 12 km to the journey with the real danger of cracked
windscreens from stones thrown up by the trucks that avoid their R387 toll fee
by using this route.
For
a local guide to escarpment
activities,
phone EdgeAdventures at 071 205 1847.
Tour
Barberton’s mines with Andrea at 0 79 180 1488.
Experience
Kaapsehoop with Pierre at 072 267 6130.
