The bridge is 30 miles (48 km) long and separates the Gulf of Mannar (southwest) from the Palk Strait (northeast). Some of the sandbanks are dry and the sea in the area is very shallow, being only 3 ft to 30 ft (1 m to 10 m) deep in places, which hinders navigation.
The bridge was first mentioned in historical works in the 9th century by Ibn Khordadbeh in his Book of Roads and Kingdoms (ca. 850 AD) and was called Set Bandhai or "Bridge of the Sea".. Later Alberuni described it.
The name Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu (Sanskrit; setu: bridge) was given to this bridge of shoals in Rameshwaram, as Hindu legend identifies it with the bridge built by the Vanara (monkey-men) army of Rama , which he used to reach Sri Lanka and rescue his wife Sita from the Rakshasa king, Ravana, as stated in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana.
The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age suggests that it may be man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago.
This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in Tredha Yuga (more than 1,700,000 years ago).
( the Ramayana relates the adventures of Rama, who, together with his three half brothers, collectively made up the seventh avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu. Rama was deprived by guile of the throne of Ayodhya and forced into a long exile with his wife, Sita, the prototype of noble womanhood. When Sita was abducted by a demon, Rama allied himself with the king of the monkeys, Sugriva, and the monkey general, Hanuman, and fought a mighty battle in Lanka (Sri Lanka). Finally, Sita was recovered, and Rama was restored to his kingdom.)
This bridge was supposedly build by the monkey general hanuman who then crossed over to India with his Simian army in a series of giant leaps to rescue Sita.
In this epic, there is a mentioning about a bridge, which was built between Rameshwaram (India) and Srilankan coast under the supervision of a dynamic and invincible figure called Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme.
It is called as Adam's Bridge in the west and the name probably comes from an Islamic legend, according to which Adam used the bridge to reach Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka, where he stood repentant on one foot for 1,000 years, leaving a large hollow mark resembling a footprint. Both the peak and the bridge are named after this legend.
The sea separating India and Sri Lanka is called Sethusamudram "Sea of the Bridge". Maps prepared by a Dutch cartographer in 1747, available at the Tanjore Saraswathi Mahal Library shows this area as Ramancoil, a colloquial form of the Tamil Raman Kovil (Rama's Temple) Another map of Mogul India prepared by J. Rennel in 1788 retrieved from the same library called this area the area of the Rama Temple Many other maps in Schwartzberg's historical atlas and other sources call this area with various names like Koti, Sethubandha and Sethubandha Rameswaram along with others.. Valmiki Ramayan called the bridge built by Lord Rama Setu Bandhanam in verse 2-22-76.
The earliest map that calls this area Adam's bridge was prepared by a British cartographer in 1804.
Some geologists have stated that this structure is a natural one whereas others believe that this structure is man-made. The Madras High Court has said that this bridge is man-made, while the Government of India in an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India, said that there is no historical proof of the bridge being built by Ram, to bolster their plan to implement the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project.
A team from the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi led by Professor S.M. Ramasamy in 2003 claimed that, "Rama's bridge could only be 3,500 years old" and, "as the carbon dating of the beaches roughly matches the dates of Ramayana, its link to the epic needs to be explored". However, one needs to note that the surveys which have come out with the 3500-year age for the bridge are based on the studies conducted on corals grown on the bridge itself and it has been argued that this represents only the age of what was measured, which is the corals. The bridge underneath the corals has been dated back to hundreds of thousands of years earlier. A former director of the Geological Survey of India, S. Badrinarayanan, claims that such a natural formation would be impossible. He justifies the same by the presence of a loose sand layer under corals for the entire stretch. Corals normally form above rocks.
In connection with the canal project, the Madras High Court in its verdict stated that the Rama Sethu is a man-made structure..Geological and archaeological findings of Teri formations, a rich assemblage of Mesolithic-Microlithic tools and human fossils found on both sides of the bridge by the Department of Earth-Science in March 2007 are also quoted as evidence for manmade structure.
Prof. N. Ramanujam, Head, Post-Graduate Department of Geology and Research Centre, V.O. Chidambaram College, astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar and a group of professors of Madurai Kamaraj University (which is in the state of Tamil Nadu and is directly under the control of the state ministry of education) stated that Rama's bridge is a natural geographical feature which formed some 17 million years ago. In addition, the Archeological Survey of India has said that the structure is not man-made. A government publication from National Remote Sensing Agency, which was recently tabled in the Indian Parliament, says that the structure "may be man-made". The Congress Government, in 2006, stated that Rama himself destroyed the bridge that he had built.
Source : Wikipedia
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