Floating stones found in Rameshwaram temple
Rameshwaram (Tamil Nadu): Do stones float in water? The answer
would be a certain no. But in the island of Rameshwaram in Tamil
Nadu, stones, it seems, do float in water. Difficult to believe but
it's a reality. Floating stones of Rameshwaram have a mythological
twist to it. According to Hindu mythological epic Ramayana, Lord
Rama and his army of monkeys used stones to build a bridge across
the Palk Strait to link Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka. Legend as well as
archaeological findings indicate the first signs of human
inhabitation in Sri Lanka date back to the primitive age and it is
assumed that the bridge's age is also almost equivalent.
G Mohan Das, a local historian and caretaker of the stones in the
temple, said that these stones could have been the kind used to
build the bridge mentioned in the epic. "The history of these
floating stones is that when Lord Rama made a bridge to trek to
Lanka to bring back his consort Sita, these were the same stones
used. But today people do not agree to it. They believe it is a
coral. We believe there is no difference in these stones. Both the
stones do not have air in them. The composition is the same and it
has 40 kinds of chemicals," he said. Space images taken by NASA
reveal a series of rock outcrops in the Palk Strait between India
and Sri Lanka. Some historians say these could be the part of the
mythological bridge linking Indian peninsula with the Sri Lankan
island.