Sacred Feet, Lotus-Feet (Pda and Pad-mam) and the Dravidian Honorific Title Atikal

K. Chandra Hari1 Sacred Feet is a rare and unique worship tradition of the Hindus. Origin of the sacred feet tradition and the later day association of Lotus with the feet of Hindu Gods can be traced to the ancient Dravidian homonym for time and feet i.e. Kl. In the mother worship of time Kli-amm became Pad-m where Pad was the sanskritization of Kl. Thus gods of time and the sacred feet got associated with Lotus. Origin of P-ja likewise can be traced to the Dravidian worship of genitalia as goddess of time. Siddhas referred to genitalia as P or flower and thus Pja became the term for worship. Later day use of flowers in worship is an aberration or a substitute invented for worship of goddess of time as genitalia. The sacred feet in turn led to the honorific title Atikal for the Gods and Chieftains. TiruAti or Tiruvatikal meant the Supreme God. Ati in fact meant the bottom or feet and unless guided by some special rationale, Adikal could not have been a honorific title. Tiru-Atikal in Sanskrit became Srpad and its variants.

In honor of the Sacred Feet

Present note is a continuation of the discussion on rationales rendered by the Dravidian root kl to the later evolved Hindu worship of time as Kla. Kl signified the quarter that made up the four fold Nl meaning the day of moon by its stellar occupation. 4 x = 1 is also reflected in Nl which is the Dravidian numeric term for four (4). Nl-kl thus meant 1 naksatra and in the colloquial usage Nl-kli meant Dravidian Kannu, the general term for cattle but proverbially suggesting the Water Bufffalo. Kannu in turn signified Moon when read as Kau meaning the eye, Moon had been the eye in the sky as the lunar-phases mimicked the opening and closing of eyes. It is likely that the Dravidian name Kaan has its origin as significative of Moon. Water Bufffalo thus could have been a motif representing the Moon as the latter also rose from the heavenly waters at the horizon. The dual meaning of the term Kaan by the interchange of with n is interesting as the Kannu meant cattle and Kannan alias Kaan as a result received sanskrtization as Go-plan. Kannan is also known to have a moon-like face and puranic conceptions related to Krishna suggests origin from astronomical myths. Vedic allusions to Moon as
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chandra_hari18@yahoo.com, 09 Aug 2012, Karkitakam, Bharai

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Go or cow may also be noted. Dravidian equivalent for Go i.e. Kli is also the Mother Goddess of time and means four footed with the implicit nl often attached in modern use as nl-kli. Also, Kli-amma may have received sanskritization as Go-mt and in turn lead to the worship of the cow. Influence of the above ideas can be traced in the portrayal of Krishna also. Krishna meant Dravidian Karuppan the black God notion arising from the homonyms of time and black. Lord of time or death as the black one may had its origin from Kla and Kalam, the latter meaning the floor drawn out for worship with blackish charcoal (Kari). Kla-rtri in fact means the darkest night or black night. Association of black and time may also be noted in historical Dravidian names like Kari-Klan. Kari had been a homonym for burning out (Kariyuka = burned, Kari = charcoal, black) and thus similar in action to time which cause everything to die out and thus death and black were synonyms in Dravidian conceptions.

Worship of time becaming worship of feet

It emerges that the Dravidian Kl had been a homonym that stood for time and feet and thus the worship of time became homologus with the worship of feet. Kla with la replaced by la indicated the bull and thus bull became the vehicle of time Kla. Floor drawn out around the Kl i.e. the pole erected for worship, became Kalam from which Kalari evolved.

Feet became Flower and Lotus

Feet or Kl became Poo as the female genitalia in Tantra received the symbolism of flower. Mother Goddess became Kli-amma and in turn led to Pad-m where Pad stood for Kl and led to the association of Lotus with the worship of time. Feet in turn became Lotus itself as seen profusively in the later descriptions of Hindu Gods. Pad-m in turn became a homonym of genitalia as seen in Padma-vati for which later Dravidian equivalents like Alamelu also evolved.

P-Ja meant Worship of Female Genitalia

The word Pja or P-chey has its genesis from the tntrik ritualistic worship of female genitalia which had the connotation P or flower in the siddha tradition. Thus the equivalence of sex worship and time worship led to the tradition where in feet is treated as sacred. In the case of male genitals, the words Muthu, Mai etc had been in use and led to god names like Muthu, Mani, Muthusvami, Manisvami etc. Muthappan and Muthuswami etc were also Gods of Time. Tntrik notions of the above kind led to the sacred association of pearl and coral stone, muthu represented the God and pavizham the Goddess by virtue of the colors, white and red, involved in ritualistic
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worship of sex. These concepts are inseprably related to ideas of Maavlan alias Sanskrit Gandharvan and only Tantra can provide rationales for the origin of original terms like Maavlan. Maam/Gandham is essentially related to P or flower and Pja and the related siddha notions.

Atikal as synonym of feet or time

With the above background, it is easy to realize that the Dravidian honorific title Adikal arose out of the notions of sacred feet and the god of time. In Dravidian usage Ati is homonym for feet and strike or beat. Ati also meant a measure of length (foot) and time reckoned in terms of the shadow length.

Pantrati pja Evidence for Ati reckoning of time

Even today many temples in Kerala has the practice of Pantrati pja a ritual timed as the 12 ft length of the shadow for 5 ghatis after sunrise. This thumb rule of 12 ft shadow of a man of height 6 ft for 5 ghatis after sunrise in fact represents the time and space of 21 March at Ujjayini on the Tropic of Cancer (240N). Man of Height (ft) 6 6 6 6 6 6 21 March Time 6:30 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:30 10:30 Shadow length in his ft for 240N 56.92 16.80 12.10 9.23 5.84 3.88

Both the height of the observer and the shadow length are measured in units of the observers feet. Pantrati meant 12 ft and the time was 5 ghatis after sunrise 8 AM.

Conclusion
It is apparent that the Dravidian notions stand at the root of many of the Hindu notions often described as the product of a Vedic paradigm. In fact the Vedic tradition is a posterior development of the Dravidian Siddha tradition through Sanskrit as a medium. Indus valley roots for the Hindu conceptions explain the so called apaurusheya doctrine on the origin of the Vedic wisdom. Siddha wisdom that went into the making of the Vedic wisdom a Dravidian to Aryan metamorphosis may be the reason that inspired the Vedic seers to credit the wisdom to the Gods, non-human authors. As the Rishi says, satyameva jayate and hence the truth can never be mitigated. As more and more excavations happen, Indus Valley may cast more light on the Indian antiquity. The south-north gap in the nature of siddha conceptions and the Dravidian-Sanskrit mutations coming to light is a pointer towards the umbilical connections to a Dravidian Indus Valley Civilization.
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