127 "Lemur" "Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in bio- geography. Though Lemuria has passed out of the realm of conventional science, it has been adopted by occult writers, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic. Lemuria entered the lexicon of the Occult through the works of Madame Blavatsky, who claimed in the s to have been shown an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan by the Mahatmas. Kumari Kandam is a sunken kingdom sometimes compared with Lemuria. According to these modernist interpretations of motifs in classical Tamil literature — the epics Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai that describe the submerged city of Puhar — the Dravidians originally came from land south of the present day coast of South India that became submerged by successive floods. There are various claims from Tamil authors that there was a large landmass connecting Australia and the present day Tamil Nadu coast. It is interesting to note that Madame Blavatsky described the Lemurians (her third root race) as being colored black and described the Negroid race, the Dravidians and the Aus-