Monsoon, The Magnanimous

“When, O Wanderer at will,
you see her in the lap of the mountain
as if in that of a lover, her shawl the Ganga slipping off,
you will not fail to recognise Alaka”

Thus speaks Kalidasa in his immortal lyrical love poem Meghdoot – the cloud messenger. The poem is the request of a yaksha imprisoned by the God of Wealth – Kuber, through the rain bringing clouds, to take to his wife a message of his love. Written in the 4th-5th century CE, the 111 stanza poem is divided broadly into two parts – Purvamegha and Uttarmegha. While the crux of the poem is the letter of love carried by clouds, and the second part the message that the yaksha has sent; the first part describes the journey of the clouds over cities, hills, rivers and temples of the Indian subcontinent right up to Alkapuri in the Himalayas.

In this description is an intricate knowledge and familiarity with the Indian landscape and geography – something quite remarkable for that time period. Even more amazing is that the route of clouds illustrated so vividly, is the accurate route of the Indian monsoon.

In Sanskrit, the monsoon is called ‘Nairutya Marut’. Maruts are storm gods and sons of Rudra, whereas Nairutya, in the Indian science of Vaastu is the name given to the south-west direction. So, though the ‘Southwest monsoon’ be a recent term in a new language on this ancient land, its speakers too saw the dark clouds and understood that from the Southwest, comes a season – the monsoon. 

However, where the sea farers of the Arabian used the summer monsoon winds to come to India and were able to return during the winter monsoon, those on the East coast set sail during the winter monsoon and returned during the summer monsoon. Traders usually travelled the distance of one monsoon, and used the reversing wind to go back to their home. It was these winds that brought spices from Southeast Asia and the gold from Europe to India. And when they reversed, the world was clothed in Indian fabric.

The first historically extant record of the knowledge and use of the monsoon phenomenon is from Hippalus (probably 45-47 CE or 1st century BCE) a Greek navigator/merchant who is credited with discovering a direct sea route from the Red Sea to India. However, given the knowledge that in the Hellenistic era of the time of Alexander, the wind currents were called Hypalus (note the similarity to Hippalus) and that the ancient Harappans, eight millennia prior carried on maritime trade beyond the Arabian, it is quite likely that both the sea routes and the seasonal winds were known to Indians and the peoples of middle eastern countries, long before Greeks and Romans took to these seas.

No matter who did it first – and the older it is, the more incredulous it gets – but the discovery that in late spring, a bolt across the sea would be faster…the guts to do that…at a time when sailing with the land in sight was the norm…that irreverence bordering on madness is what civilisations and human evolution are made of.