Tamil Nadu to construct Grand Porunai Museum in Tirunelveli

A grand and modern ‘Porunai Museum’ to display artefacts unearthed from Korkai, an ancient port of the famed Pandya Dynasty, and Sivakalai and Adichanallur, where recent archaeological excavations have created a buzz, will come up at a cost of Rs 33 crore in Tirunelveli in southern Tamil Nadu.

Chief Minister M K Stalin laid the foundation stone for the mega project via video conferencing on Thursday as his government attaches utmost importance to excavations that are aimed at finding archaeological evidence of rich literary mentions of various places in the age-old Sangam Literature.

Stalin has been saying that his government will prove “scientifically” that India’s history should be rewritten from the Tamil landscape.

The grand museum will come up at Kulavanigarpuram village in Tirunelveli district at an area of 5.276 hectares. “10 acres out of this will be utilised for the museum which will come up at an area of 55,500 square feet at Rs 33.2 crore,” the government said in a statement.

The museum will have three sections – Korkai, Sivakalai, and Adichanallur, besides an administrative building. While Korkai is a celebrated and busy port of the Pandya kingdom, archaeological excavations in Sivakalai and Adichanallur have thrown up huge surprises.

Carbon dating of rice husks found from a burial urn unearthed in Sivakalai showed they were 3,200 years old, making the site older than Keeladi, which is at least 2,600 years old.

The foundation stone is being laid months after the state government threw open a grand museum in Keeladi, a Sangam-era site which has thrown ample evidence of the existence of an urban civilisation.