Suyya, the Great Medieval Engineer of Kashmir

In the 8th century A.D., Lalitaditya Muktapidya had drained Vitasta (the Jhelum) in the vast vale of Kashmir, because floods caused by excessive rains would damage the crops. The great emperor also had many canals dug out from the Vitasta. After Jayapidya, kings of little virility and vision ruled the Valley. More and more lands were denuded by or submerged under the mater as the bed of the Vitasta rose in the course of many decades. The people were unhappy.

Avantipura was the capital of Kashmir. The town was spread about the two magnificent temples, Avantiswami and Avantasvara. Their noteworthy ruins, found 20 km from Srinagar on the roadside, interest the tourists to Kashmir under the foot of a towering craggy mountain, on arising plateau that flanked the Vitasta and commanded a fine, broad view of the Valley fields, uplands and encircling ranges of mountains. Here lived the King of Kashmir, Avantivannan, (857884 A.D.), the great builder of temples, who was a saint-monarch.

His courtiers and ministers sat about him as he gazed out of the window. "There, you see the inundated fields;" sadly remarked Avantivarman, "the Vitasa creeps over more fields like a devouring serpent. We did much for our people. But how can we rid them of this menace which is starving them now?"

"Sire," replied the prime minister, Sura, "Your Majesty has got dug so many canals. Others, blocked up during scores of years of misrule, when kings and queens were more concerned with their palace intrigues than with the welfare of the people, were cleared. What more can we do?"

"Something more has to be done,' persisted the king, "yearly the Vitasta is rising, overflowing cultivated land and submerging riverside towns, villages and hamlets."

"Sire", rejoined the minister Prabhakaravarman, " the price of a Khari of paddy has risen to 250 dinnaras."

The King fell athinking.

The poet Anandavardhana broke the silence, after a while, "Sire, in Parihaspura I heard of a man who has been saying for years, 'I have a plan to save Kashmir from floods. I would work it out if I had the resources.' People say he is a madman."

Avantivarman was interested and said, "Tell us more about him".

"I know no more, Sire," confessed Anandavardhana, "but I can have the man traced."

Suravarman, the Yuvaraja, supplied the information: "Sire, the man is a Brahmin, Suyya. They say he wasn't born of a woman's womb. A Chandala woman, named Suyya, found a baby in a dust heap, sucking its thumb in a new earthen pot which had a lid on. The lustrous-eyed babe was not polluted by her with her touch. She had it brought up by a Shudra wet nurse and she gave her own name to the baby. The boy, as he grew up, picked up the Vedas and other learning very precociously. Now he fasts and bathes a lot and leads a very religious life. He goes about saying he has a plan to do away with the floods of the Vitasta. People, as Anandavardhana said, call him mad".

"Very interesting", commented Avantivarman.

"Sire", observed Sura, who was thinking out his opinion so far, "I too have heard about this man Suyya. People's reports and facts may not agree. We cannot be sure that the man is crazy, unless we know better".

"Precisely, that is what we feel. Send your spies, Sura, and find out where Suyya is. Let him be granted an audience before us".

In a few days Suyya was present in the King's court. The courtiers passed whispering remarks about his strange appearance: he was a very handsome youth with the large lotus eyes they had heard of. The lustre of chastity shone bright on his face. He looked a scholar. There was something extremely individual about him. As he talked to the King in his serious manner, a silence fell on the court.

To the King's question, he replied, "Sire, it's true that all these years I have talked that I have a plan to drain the Valley. For the present, give me only two pots full of dinnaras. With that I will bring down the inundated waters by one-third their volume".
"He is crazy", the courtiers cut him short.

"Crazy or no ?" rang Suyya's voice. "Trust me with the money 1 want, great Maharaja. See the result, Sire. I am not a robber to do away with people's money".

Sura for once did not know what to say. He fidgeted his fingers, a-thinking.

Avantivarman spoke his decision:" Suyya, you will have the two pots of dinnaras. Our men will go with you".

There was a commotion as Suyya, accompanied by a few soldiers, left the court, bowing three times, walking backwards, with folded hands and looking towards the throned monarch.

In Madhavarajya (now called Maraj, the part of the Valley on either side of the Jhelum above Srinagar), Suyya dropped one pot of dinnaras in a flooded village, Nankaka, where the water was logged up. The Maharaja's men thought that Suyya was indeed crazy.

Then Suyya cruised down the Vitasta to Kramarajya (now, Kamraj, the part of the Valley on either side of the Jhelum, below Srinagar), and dropped the other vessel of dinnaras near Yaksodara in the Vitasta, at a point where, in the course of time, boulders, fallen from the mountainous banks, had bottled up the neck of the river. The result was that the Vitasta's current had been reversed and water gushed back into the Valley, overflowing farm, field, garden and town.

At this time many people starved due to the lack and high prices of foodstuffs. The famished and unemployed peasants living about Nankaka and Yaksodara heard of the pots of dinmras dropped into the water. Afloat on inflated skins, they braved the boulders to extract the dinnaras. The displaced boulders at Nankaka were rushed down by the torrential water. More water flowed down. The boulders rolled down from the overhanging mountains had squeezed the Vitasta at Yaksodara. They were displaced by the people, desperately delving for the dinnaras. When that happened, some of the water resumed its natural current. Indeed by this process, the Valley was being drained to one-third the volume of lake and river water. Many sand-laden fields were bared as the muddy waters fell in level overnight.

Avantivarman and his ministers saw the working of the 'miracle'. They did not call Suyya crazy or the like any longer. Suyya did not heed or love applause just as he had been indifferent to hostile criticisms of his plans. These were now working after all. That was all that mattered with him. When much of the flood water was drained, he had a huge dam constructed; thus he locked the entire Vitasta for a week. In the meantime, by the organised use of labour of hundreds of men, the bed of the Vitasta was cleared and the boulders were removed where the river rolled down between precipices. Stone embankments were constructed as a counter measure against rolling boulders resuming their position.

The dam was opened. The mad waters leaped down furiously. The Vitasta was finally cleared of obstacles to its smooth course "Covered with mud and asparkle with fish, the land when stripped of water, appeared like the vault of the sky which when free from clouds dispels the gloom of darkness and is full of stars".

No one was more pleased at the success of Suyya than the munificent Avantivarman who freely provided him with money and resources for his countrywide engineering enterprises. Suyya was appointed the royal engineer. Highest honours were conferred on him by the King who also regarded Suyya highly for his meritorious life of chastity and learning.

New channels were opened out from the Vitasta into the dry interior where the rains came but precariously. "With several canals thrown out from the original main stream the river shone like a black female snake with numerous hoods resting on one body." The site of
Historical Tales of Kashmir the confluence of the Sindhu (Indus) and the Vitasta was changed by Suyya. The alteration was planned to the general good of irrigation. Indeed, "he made the various streams, whose undulating ripples were their tongues, take to any course at his own pleasure like a charmer of the female snakes".

Next, the dynamic Suyya turned his attention to Mahapadma (Wular Lake) - the largest fresh water lake in India - into which the Vitasta flows. At the point where the Vitasta left the lake, the bed was dredged, with the result that the Vitasta emerged on her course with swiftness, like an arrow from the mechanism of the bow. Through mile-long dykes, much of the rich surrounding land, that was submerged under water, was reclaimed. All types of villages were founded. For miles around the lake, which seemed to stretch to the horizons, Suyya founded a sanctuary of birds and prohibited the killing of birds and fishes. His idea, apart from its humanitarian aspects, was to preserve rare wild species among birds.
On the banks of the Vitasta where she emerges from the waters of the Mahapadma lake, Suyya founded the prosperous town, Suyyapura, (now Sopore), named after him. He founded Suyya Kundala in memory of the woman whose name he bore. In her name tie also constructed Suyya Bridge. The philanthropic monarch, Avantivarman, founded many a new town and village that grew up when more and more canals from the Vitasta spread across the Valley. Sura founded Surapura. The King and his minister highly esteemed Suyya, the engineer of untiring industry and fertile imagination who was also endowed with practical wisdom and encyclopaedic learning.

Wherever the banks of the Vitasta were vulnerable, strong stone embankments were constructed. Suyya determined the exact period at which each and every village would require irrigation. With indefatigable energy, Suyya decided the extent and distribution of canal water on a permanent basis. Kashmiri farmers for the first time achieved the prosperity that was never before known by them. Paddy grew in such abundance that, in the lifetime of Suyya, its price per Khari fell from 250 to 36 dinnaras.

"Neither Kashyapa nor Samskarna had conferred benefits such as conferred with ease on this realm by Suyya of meritorious acts. The reclamation of the land from water, the bestowal of it to pious Brahmins, the building of barrages with stones in water and the suppression of Kaliya, which were achieved by Vishnu in four incarnations of righteous acts, were achieved by Suyya, who had a mass of religious merits, in a single birth only." *
*Rajatarangini, Taranga V, 113, 115.