Heritage enthusiasts document and excavate structural remains in Fort Kochi

Heritage enthusiasts in Fort Kochi spearheaded an effort to locate, excavate and document scattered and partially exposed stones of historic importance

March 27, 2021 04:13 pm | Updated March 31, 2021 12:12 pm IST - Kochi

 

“The stones, with their inscriptions, intrigued me,” says Raigon Stanley, artist and licensed art collector. Sitting in his office-exhibition space, The Grey Book Museum and Archives, in Rose Street, Fort Kochi, Raigon is talking about the city’s ancient structural remains, possible relics of the 1503 Portuguese-built Fort Emmanuel.

During the lockdown, he spearheaded a team of individuals interested in local heritage and history to locate, excavate and document these scattered, partially exposed stones around Fort Kochi. He also got permission to display them in the garden of the recently opened Bastion Bungalow Museum that tells the story of Kochi through archival records.

Fort Emmanuel was the first fort made by a European power in Asia. A hundred years later, it was overrun by the Dutch and additions were made. The British who entered the scene later used these buildings for housing and military purposes. During low tide, stony tops of underwater structures, possibly part of the fort, emerge.

Break in tourism helped

Even as a young boy studying in SantaCruz High School, Fort Kochi, Raigon was curious about these relics. “Chinese fishing nets were around some of these. The fishermen angled next to the stones and school kids played around them, oblivious to their historical value,” says Raigon who first noticed a rectangular stone with inscriptions and a Gothic column base near a Chinese fishing net in 2002.

With tourism coming to a halt in the wake of COVID-19, the stones stood starkly in the empty shoreline and streets of Fort Kochi. When the works of relaying the cobbled stone footpaths and pavements and other projects of the Cochin Smart City Mission began, Raigon saw it as a chance to retrieve the stones and possibly fill in the gaps in the local history.

He contacted Taha Ibrahim, a history buff; Antony Kureethara, a councillor at the Cochin Corporation and environmentalist Siddique Tajee to help. As an art collector, Raigon was able to document the stones, painstakingly photograph and measure them. He contacted the ASI only to learn that the stones were not “national treasures” but of significant value to local history and came under the jurisdiction of the State ASI.

What the maps say

The excavation began at 10 am on a quiet February morning. The once inimical fisher folk, had been briefed about the value of the stones and were now eager and helpful. As the large excavator proved heavy for the shoreline, a smaller one was brought. The fishermen, Raigon’s team, with men from the State ASI, watched the slow and technical extraction in wonder.

“There are 12 stones and a laterite foundation. They look like slabs from the top, their sides are ornate with grooves and some have a small shaft and a slot on surface (for locking two surfaces together). They are probably parts of a column,” says Raigon, adding that many were unearthed when the mouth of the sea was regularly dredged to maintain the channel depth.

Poring over the maps he collected as part of his research, he estimates that this column may have been one of the three standing in Fort Kochi: two in the Santa Cruz Basilica and a column at the beach .

K. Harikumar, Documentation Assistant and In-Charge of the Bastion Bungalow Museum, believes that the stones belong to a period of ancient India.

“For modern Indians, the history of Fort Kochi begins with the Portuguese. But before the floods created a mouth at Fort Kochi, this was solid land where Buddhism flourished. In his book, The History of Fort Cochin , K.L. Bernard has written extensively about the period between the 1st Century BCE and 2nd Century CE when Buddhists lived here and had their temples.” He attributes more antiquity to these stones because, “European pillars are round, whereas these are hexagonal like temple pillars.”

Raigon is happy to have been able to preserve the stones. “It’s my mission to preserve the old city of Cochin. Learning about the history of a place is a good way to bring communities together through a shared understanding of their unique cultural identity.”

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