According to legend, it was Sage Parusharam who brought the people to the coast of India from the North. It has been explained clearly that the kshatriyas (warrior-classmen) were abusing and mistreating the brahmans (priestly-classmen) to a large extent in Northern India. The story goes as such. Once upon a time there was a sage by the name of Jamadagni and he had a wife Renuka. They lived by a lake in what is presently the state of Himachal Pradesh. The king of the area, Karthaveerya, who was used to abuse and mistreat the brahmans had an eye for Renuka and he wanted to have her as his own. Sage Jamadagni had a son by the name of Parusharam, who the king knew to be quite strong, so he didn’t know how to pursue about his goal. It is said that once when Parusharam had gone to gather firewood from the forest, the king went to the sage’s residence and killed Jamadagni and tried to abduct Renuka. Renuka being a pious woman, would rather die than fall into the hands of the evil king and so let her self be consumed by the waters of the lake. It is said that the Gods took pity on Renuka and brought her back to life, thereafter. The village town by Lake Renukaji is so-called after Lady Renuka. When her son, Parusharam returned from the forest, his mother told him about the king’s brutality. So angered was Parusharam by the king’s selfish actions, he vowed to rid the world of kshatriyas. He single-handedly battled Kathaveerya and slew him. He destroyed the kingdom and also many kshyatriyas. By doing thus, he is said to have saved the Brahman race and is hailed as the sixth avatar of Lord Vishnu. Knowing of this oppression, Parusharam willed to create a new safe land for the brahmans to reside in, so having gone to the western ghats, he is said to have thrown his ax into the Arabian Sea from the Shayadri mountain. He proclaimed to the sea, "Recede as far back as my ax will land." The sea receded to form a new strip of land, the western coast of India, creating seven new lands known as Karnata, Kerala, Tulanga, Saurashtra, Konkana, Karaharta and Barbaara. In this newly created lands, also referred to as Parusharam’s Srashti (The Creation of Parusharam), he brought the brahmans. This was their own corner (kona), a demarcated or safe area (ankana), known as Kona-Ankana or Konkana.
So what does this have to do with Konkani? Certainly, the word Konkan finds its origin from this myth of Parusharam, but is this the end? No. The history of the Konkanis goes far back before the time of Parusharam and is linked to this story. It is well known that Konkani brahmans are either Chitrapur Saraswath or Goud Saraswath Brahmans and this is a key to their history. Long ago, according to the Rig Veda, there was a majestic river that flowed in Northern India. This river was called Saraswathi after the Goddess Saraswathi. The Rig Veda describes this river as the holiest, the purest and the grandest of rivers, while it does not describe the river Ganga the same way. The Saraswathi flowed from the Himalayas into the kingdom of Kashmir, in the present state of Jammu and Kashmir, into Punjab and Haryana and then into Sindh, now Pakistan to meet the Sindhu [Indus] into Arabian Sea. The river has long since dried out because this river flowed from the receding glaciers of the great ice age 10,000 years ago. Satellite photography has shown the existence of this great river and the valley in which it flowed. It so happened that the Saraswath Brahmans lived in the land between the rivers Saraswathi and Dristhadvathi, perhaps the seat of Hinduism itself, in a nation they called Saraswath Desh. In this nation, there was a town called Kashmirapur, which the area has now come to be known by. Saraswath Desh was a very fertile land watered by the Saraswathi. This was during the vedic age of Hinduism and Sanskrit and vernaculars of Sanskrit were widely spoken. The Saraswath Brahmans are said to be well versed in Sanskrit and stressed the importance of its correct pronunciation. The daily language was, of course, a vernacular of Sanskrit and came to be known in the local area as Brahmani, while the script of the vernacular was called Brahmi because it differed from the Nagari script that vedic Sanskrit used.
Some calamity, it is believed, struck Saraswath Desh. Most historians suspect that after a few thousand years of flowing, the glacier began empty of its potential and the Saraswathi began to dry out. The legend says that there was a wide spread drought and people died I masses. The Saraswathakhyana chapter of the Shalya Parva of the Mahabharat, describes this famine to have lasted twelve years. Their guru, Saraswath Muni is said to have been the sole survivor, who lived on a diet of fish only. Others are in the opinion that there were invaders from the central Asia who began to destroy the inhabitants. Whatever it may be, this period of history saw many civilizations abandoning their settlements, the Indus Valley was also abandoned around the same time, for example. The rest of the inhabitants either escaped their much beloved nation or died in doing so. In any case, it is believed that the Saraswath Brahmans migrated southward. It is somewhat unclear as to where they settled once they migrated southward. Scholars argue as to whether they remained close by, or whether they moved along the course of other rivers. Some claim that the Brahmans went along the course of the Ganga and Jamuna into a nation close to the present city of Prayag [Allahabad] which was called Trihotrapur, believed to now be the area of Trihut in northern part of the state of Bihar. Others believe that the Saraswaths remained closer to their original motherland, but migrated directly southward close to the city of Jammu and Kangra district of northern Punjab, along the tributaries of the Sindhu [Indus]. apparently, they spent the next few centuries here, may it be Trihotrapur or near Jammu. Again this was not the end of their journey. Going back to legend, they are said to be brought by Sage Parusharam southward, but for all practical purposes we will also consider the theory that they migrated southward by themselves. As we have already established, Sage Parusharam, who felt the brahmans were oppressed in the area now near the state of Himachal Pradesh, he brought to the western coast of India. It is also said that he brought many families of the brahmans from the kingdom of Trihotrapur, for the funeral rites of his father Jamadagni. Another possibility is that the brahmans migrated southward because of oppression, possibly, and there is evidence to support this also. If we are to take this second possibility into mind, we must first keep in mind that the Saraswath Brahmans were living in northern Punjab and Jammu. They must have then migrated southward over a course of a couple of centuries toward the western coast. Today there are small Saraswath Brahman communities in Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujurat, Madhya Pradesh, and of course on the western coast where they eventually arrived. Since Saraswath communities are also found in Uttar Pradesh, we cannot purely go by this possibility. For our purposes, we can go with the legend that the Saraswaths came with Parusharam southward and settled on the way, but most of them came to the coast and also that there were Saraswaths in Trihotrapur whom Parusharam also brought onto the coast. Therefore, we have to take the possibility that the Saraswaths came from several nations of northern India including Trihotrapur, Kanyakubja (near Gujurat and Rajasthan) and Punjab area.
The Saraswaths moved into the area later known as Sourashtra, south of Gujarat into what is now the coast line of the state of Maharashtra. Most probably settled by the southern coast of Maharashtra, near the city of Gomantak, now Goa. If one is to go by the scriptures, this time period is probably in the B.C. range, probably even before the time of Buddha, as Parusharam is said to be the sixth avatar of Lord Vishnu and Buddha the ninth. In fact, the Ramayan, based during the lifetime of Lord Ram, and the Mahabharat epic, known to be during the lifetime of Lord Krishna, describes to city of Gomantak and its inhabitants. The account of the Saraswath Brahmans' migration is describe in the vedas and the puranas, known to be clearly written before the Ramayan or the Mahabharat. In the Mahabharat, it is said that King Yudhisthira, during the Pandavas' vanavaas (exile in the forest), went to visit the beautiful city of Gomantak. He is told by some that the brahmans who reside there are very learned in the vedas and quite pious indeed. Although there is no proof that these are actually the Saraswath Brahmans who were discussed in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharat, it is quite likely that these were the former because the Saraswath Brahmans were well-known for their strong upholding of religious beliefs and their well-versedness in the vedas.
These Saraswath Brahmans lived on the western coast of India in peace for a few centuries and they were quite content. In this millennium, especially, they found their golden age. During the middle part of this millennium, the Saraswath Brahmans served as priests, advisors and ministers of the Hindu kings who ruled central India, especially the Maratha kings. By this time, the language of India was changed and Prakrit had already taken over Sanskrit in daily language. The original language of the Saraswath Brahmans, Brahmani, had long since merged with the softer Prakrit dialects, but at times used strong Sanskrit words, even in daily language. In northern and central India, the Apabrahmsas Pali were all mixing together to form Braj Bhasha, which later began to develop into Hindi, but alongside, there were other Prakrits, used today, that were also forming. In the area that these brahmans lived, the local Prakrit that began to develop was later known as Marathi. The kings spoke this local dialect and since they often hired priests, advisors and ministers of Saraswath descent, they often spoke their language too. The language of the Saraswaths came to be known as Konkani since it was local to the area of Konkan. The rajas [kings] used it extensively to develop their own language, Marathi. Even today, many are confused and think that either Konkani borrowed heavily from Marathi or the languages were sisters in development. However, the classical Sanskritized and other words not found in common Hindi [Hindustani] are, in fact, originally brought into Marathi by Konkani. The kings of the Maratha Kingdom tied Konkani words into Marathi, but never spoke Konkani in daily life. Therefore, their language developed it own tone, literature and poetry. At this time, in all of northern and central India, the Devanagri script was widely used and emphasized over the old vedic Nagari. Marathi and Konkani both used this script. The Brahmi script has long been outdated by this time. Both languages developed a lot of Hindu literature and poetry, often borrowing from each other and translating amongst each other.
The capital of the Konkan, Gomantak, was one of the very well sought cities throughout history. The Greeks, Ptolemy in particular, has described a city on the west coast of India, he calls Kouba. The rajas of the Dakhin, especially those of the Vijaynagar empire have stone tablets describing this city of wonders, which they called Govepuri. So by the thirteenth century, the city of Gomantak, had already acquired the name, Gova. By the 1350's, the Muslim Afghani invaders of India had reached central and southern India. In, 1351 AD Hasan Gangu Jaffar Khan of Bahmani kingdom invaded Goa and annexed it. His army destroyed the whole city and burned temples, houses and devastated the city. He was followed by his son, the ever infamous, Mohammed of Ghazni, in 1357 AD. Mohammad of Ghazni had been praised by the Islamic poets who have described his destruction of the famous Somnath temple in Gujurat as summoned by Allah, himself. The story of the Somnath temple goes as follows. The Somnath temple was a very big and rich temple dedicated to Lord Somnath [Shiva]. It is believed that it is one of the seven holy places of Lord Shiva around the country. The temple owned a lot of gold and silver. When Mohammed of Ghazni came to the area, the priests thought that if they lay around the temple, Mohammed would not cross them, as it was a Hindu custom, never to walk over a laying person. So the priests lay around the temple and around the idol of Lord Somnath, but to no avail. They were all slaughtered, the temple burned, and all the gold and silver taken. Then, he moved southward to Goa. Goa was also to suffer a similar fate as Somnath did. After Mohammad of Ghazni's destruction of Goa and annexation of the Vijaynagar empire, the Islamic rule in the area overtook both the Maratha and the Vijaynagar rajas. Goa was ruled directly by the Sultans of Bijapur in northern Karnataka. Though the literature of the Marathi lived on within the centers of Sourashtra, the literature and poetry of Konkani was all but destroyed and burned during the period of Islamic rule in the area between the late 1350s to the early 1500s. It is said that because of their tyranny, the people had to practice their religion in secret. A reign of terror overtook the area, but the Saraswath Brahmans practiced their religion privately without upsetting the rulers. Many of the Konkani speaking people of coastal northern Karnataka, were converted to Islam as a result of the Islamic rule. The Islamic Konkanis adopted the Persian alphabet, but the Brahmans retained the Devnagari alphabet in secret. Even to this day, there are Konkani speaking Muslims in northern coastal Karnataka. They are called Navayat Muslims and they are mostly mugars [fishermen], but some still wear the sacred Hindu thread, janu, despite the almost 400 years after conversion into Islam.
In 1498, Vasco da Gama of Portugal finally discovered the much sought sea route to India. He landed in Kazikhode [Calicut], Kerala, but after landing there sailed as far north as Goa. No sooner, the Portuguese ordered an attack on Goa, in the name of the Portuguese king. In 1510, the Portuguese fleet led by commander Alfanso de Albuquerque attacked Goa and destroyed Sultan of Bijapur's army. The Muslims were driven out of the area and the Portuguese set up their East Indies Empire based in Goa. No sooner, the Spanish Inquisition began in the Iberian peninsula and spread quickly into the hearts of Portugal. The Portuguese were quick to notice the indigenous people of Goa and their "need" to be converted. Force conversions began in Goa as early as the mid 1500s. Missionaries were given the authority to mass-convert the Hindus and have them slaughtered for refusal. The temples were again burned, scriptures destroyed. From village to village, the missionaries came with their men and forced the people to convert to Catholicism. In some villages, they even worked out deals with the inhabitants. Half of them were converted and half left out. This was perhaps the worst of times seen by the Konkani people. Although the people of the lower castes were converted, the Saraswath Brahmans decided to escape. Having thrown the idols of their Kul-Devatas (resident deities) into wells, thousands of Saraswath Brahman families fled to interior Maharashtra and coastal Karnataka. It is said that once tensions died down, the Brahman men alone traveled back to their native places and brought back their Kul-Devatas. The families who escaped were never to see Goa again. The settled down in their new homes in Karnataka and Maharashtra and some even migrated far south as Cochin, Kerala. A large percentage of the escapees, though settled in the present districts of Uttar Kannad and Dakshin Kannad in Karnataka. The Keladi Nayak Rajas of Bendore supported them and urged them to settle down in this area because they were renowned agriculturists. They lived under the rule of the Bendore Nayak rajas, who granted them land, especially Shivappa Nayak. By 1763, the Uttar and Dakshin Kannad districts were the only regions of Karnataka that were not under the Muslim rule. The kingdom of Mysore in the southern Dakhin had already been taken by Hyder Ali from the Wodeyar rajas. He progressed westward past the western ghats in 1763, into these districts and took over the plains also from the Bendore king. In 1782, Sultan Tippu Sahib came to the throne after his father, Hyder Ali. He was known for his equal treatment for all races, except he was under the impression that the Christians of coastal Karnataka were siding against him and helping the British. He imprisoned about 50,000 Konkani Christians for suspicion in 1784. These Konkani Christians had also moved into Uttar and Dakshin Kannad from Goa, originally descendants of the Konkani speaking folk of Goa.
By this time, the British had well made it into India and had taken over several areas already of both North and South India. They had already had the state of Tamilnadu, then known as Madras. In 1782, after Tippu Sahib refused to incorporate his Karnataka empire in with the Madras presidency, he fought a battle with the British forces and crushed them. In the treaty of Mangalore of 1784, he declared his empire independent of the British empire. He then imprisoned the Konkani Christians, and took them to his fort in Srirangapatanam, Karnataka for imprisonment. He kept the British out of his empire until 1799 when a weak Tippu Sahib and his army were defeated in the battle of Srirangapatanam and the state of Karnataka, then known as Mysore, was incorporated in with the Madras presidency. The Christians were freed at the time and were allowed to settle back into their homeland of the Kannad districts.
From 1799 to 1960, the Konkanis lived in two separate kingdoms. The Konkanis of Goa lived under the Portuguese rule until it was finally released in 1960 and the Konkanis of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala lived under the British Raj until 1947, when India achieved its' independence. After the Portuguese refused to give up their possession of Goa, Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru sent the Indian army and drove them out. In this period of almost 200 years, they changed in many ways. First the Konkani language lost its alphabet, literature and poetry completely. It changed into the language it presently is, a language of daily life, rarely if ever written using other alphabets. The Konkanis of Karnataka mixed a lot of Kannada into their language, the ones in Maharashtra began speaking Marathi to so much of an extent, that they no longer speak Konkani, and the ones in Kerala mixed Malayalam. The Konkanis of Goa were forced to abandon their script and forced to use the Roman script. They were forced to speak Portuguese, whenever possible. Of course, they did not abandon the language altogether. Most people who still spoke Konkani, used a lot of Portuguese words. The Portuguese developed and used the Roman script for Konkani and allowed it to used only for Christian writings. The first Bible in any Indian language was written using this Roman script in Konkani and the first book published in India was also using the same script.
