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Sacred Feet, Lotus-Feet (Pāda and Pad-mam) and the

Dravidian Honorific Title ‘At ikal’

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. Kāl. In the mother

worship of time Kāl�i-ammā became Pad-mā where Pad was the sanskritization of Kāl.

Thus gods of time and the sacred feet got associated with Lotus. Origin of Pū-ja

likewise can be traced to the Dravidian worship of genitalia as goddess of time.

Siddha’s referred to genitalia as ‘Pū’ or flower and thus Pūja 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 ‘At �ikal�’ for the Gods and Chieftains. Tiru-

Ati or Tiruvatikal meant the Supreme God. ‘At �i’ in fact meant the bottom or feet and

unless guided by some special rationale, Ad �ikal could not have been a honorific title.

Tiru-At �ikal in Sanskrit became Srīpad and its variants.

In honor of the Sacred Feet

Present note is a continuation of the discussion on rationales rendered by the Dravidian

root ‘kāl’ to the later evolved Hindu worship of time as Kāla.

‘Kāl’ signified the quarter that made up the four fold ‘Nāl’ meaning the day of moon by

its stellar occupation. 4 x ¼ = 1 is also reflected in ‘Nāl’ which is the Dravidian numeric

term for four (4). Nāl-kāl thus meant 1 naksatra and in the colloquial usage Nāl-kāli

meant Dravidian ‘Kannu’, the general term for cattle but proverbially suggesting the

Water Bufffalo. ‘Kannu’ in turn signified Moon when read as ‘KaĦĦu’ 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 ‘KaĦĦan’ 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 KaĦĦan by the interchange of Ħ with n is interesting as

the ‘Kannu’ meant cattle and Kannan alias KaĦĦan as a result received sanskrtization

as ‘Go-pālan’. 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

1 chandra_hari18@yahoo.com, 09 Aug 2012, Karkitakam, BharaĦi

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‘Go’ or cow may also be noted. Dravidian equivalent for ‘Go’ i.e. Kāli is also the Mother

Goddess of time and means ‘four footed’ with the implicit ‘nāl’ often attached in modern

use as ‘nāl-kāli’. Also, Kāli-amma may have received sanskritization as Go-mātā 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 Kāla and

Kalam, the latter meaning the floor drawn out for worship with blackish charcoal (Kari).

Kāla-rātri in fact means the darkest night or black night. Association of black and time

may also be noted in historical Dravidian names like Kari-Kālan. 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 ‘Kāl’ had been a homonym that stood for time and feet

and thus the worship of time became homologus with the worship of feet. Kāla with la

replaced by la indicated the bull and thus bull became the vehicle of time Kāla. Floor

drawn out around the ‘Kāl’ i.e. the pole erected for worship, became Kalam from which

Kalari evolved.

Feet became Flower and Lotus

Feet or Kāl became ‘Poo’ as the female genitalia in Tantra received the symbolism of

flower. Mother Goddess became Kāli-amma and in turn led to Pad-mā where Pad stood

for Kāl 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-mā in turn

became a homonym of genitalia as seen in Padma-vati for which later Dravidian

equivalents like Alamelu also evolved.

Pū-Ja meant Worship of Female Genitalia

The word Pūja or Pū-chey has its genesis from the tāntrik ritualistic worship of female

genitalia which had the connotation ‘Pū’ 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, MaĦi 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. Tāntrik 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 MaĦavālan alias

Sanskrit Gandharvan and only Tantra can provide rationales for the origin of original

terms like MaĦavālan. MaĦam/Gandham is essentially related to Pū or flower and Pūja

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. At i also meant a measure of length (foot) and time

reckoned in terms of the shadow length.

Pantīrati pūja – Evidence for Ati reckoning of time

Even today many temples in Kerala has the practice of ‘Pantīrati pūja’ – 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)

21 March Time

Shadow length in his ft for 240N

6 6:30 56.92

6 7:30 16.80

6 8:00 12.10

6 8:30 9.23

6 9:30 5.84

6 10:30 3.88

Both the height of the observer and the shadow length are measured in units of the

observer’s feet. Pantīrati 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.