The Muqanis are the hereditary class of professionals engaged in
divining dowsing in Iran where they are asked to find a place with
abundance of underground water and traditionally build/ repair these
systems. The water has to be taken to the place to be irrigated by means
of a tunnel provided at the bottom of the well. The Qanat is in the
shape of a kendi. The tunnel is the spout, which conducts the water to
the place to be irrigated. Pranamukham is the spout of a vessel. The
mouth of a river, point of discharge, is embouchure.
Muqhanis are paid high wages and command respect. They have inspired a
body of folk custom and belief. “A muqanni will not work on a day he
considers to be unlucky, or if he sneezes on that day. Floods and
cave-ins in the Qanat tunnels are frequent, and deaths among muqannis
occur. Older muqannis are considered blessed or at the very least lucky.
Prayers are performed each time a muqanni descends into a Qanat. This
ceremony makes a deep impression on Iranian villagers.”
In Malayalam, mukkaniyan is a Brahmin who came from abroad. He is also
known as aaryappattar. Choziyar is Tamil Brahmin. The males among them
wore a tuft of hair on the front of their head. Choziyan, also known as
Choziyappattar, are Brahmins from Chozadesam. Here, no investigations
are made in regard to the relations of these words. Gundert speaks about
Brahman being called aaranan, when entering the peninsula ...perhaps the
name by which they called themselves when entering the peninsula. The
fact that the word mukkaaniyan rhymes with muqanni is noteworthy.
Aarya(m)pattar is a kind of foreign Brahmins. Aaryavartham, the
gathering place of the Aryas, is the country between Himalayas and
Vindhyas.
Muqhani is a person who fulfils the job of a tunnel. In Malayalam muzu
means full, complete, and perfect. In Tamil the corresponding word is
muzukuthal. Kham holds the meaning such as well, cavity, hole. Khanitra
is an instrument to dig or scoop. Khanitraka is a small shovel or scoop.
Khanya is anything being dug out. Khanya/ khanitri is a digger. Khanaka
is one who digs, an excavator. Khanana is the act of digging or
excavating. Khaanam is tunnel. Khaanakan is one who digs. Mukya means
chief, eminent, leader, guide, being at the top or head, being foremost
etc. Mukyanrpa is paramount sovereign. Mukyamanthri is prime minister.
Perhaps the word Muqani might have originated from the importance of
being the prime person in excavating the mine.
In Sanskrit, one who digs or mines a well is known as koopakhanakan. In
Iran, the Qanat digger is muqanni, an amalgam of two words, mu+khani.
One who mines a tunnel is Khaani/ Khaanakan. The word mu can be either
muzu/ mukya. Whereas mukhya means the main person, muzu has several
meanings such as perfect, complete, drown in the water, fulfill etc. The
meaning attributed to muzu and mukhya are fitting to the expertise of
muqanni. This conveys that the word under discussion is a Sanskrit word
analogous to the mughanni in Iran.
Their counterparts in Morocco, until a generation ago, were the haritin,
whose task was generally agricultural maintenance. An entire class of
haritin was known as khattater from khettara. The khettater/ haritin in
general were a social class held as chattel and were viewed with
contempt. But now they are a liberated caste. But the mughanni, in spite
of their low caste and crude work, are still held in esteem for their
skill and performance.
Oman’s divine dowsers are the Awamir. A special guild of water diviners
as they are, they have achieved fame for their ability to find hidden
sources of water. With their experience and instinct they generally
scrutinize the topography, soils, vegetation and finally the presence or
absence of certain types of plants. These observations enable them to
locate the place to sink a trial shaft. If they adjudge that the flow
will likely be constant, the construction of a mother well (umm
al-falaj), a vertical shaft down to the aquifer will commence.
Mattock
The mattock is a domestic/ agricultural tool used for digging and
mining. Its head, terminating in a broader blade rather than a narrow
spike, makes it particularly suitable for breaking up moderately hard
ground. The tankam, a Sanskrit word for a hatchet or a hoe, is also
known as a crow bar. While breaking a stone, the instrument produces a
sound “tung,” hence the name, tankam. The word mata in Malayalam means a
sluice or water channel. The tankam used to excavate a sluice mata came
to be called mattock, amalgamating the two words mata and tankam.
Charkha (Windlass)
With a small pick and shovel, the Muqani heads the team to construct a
Qanat. While he excavates the tunnel, his apprentice packs the loose
dirt into a leather bucket. Two labourers at the surface of the shaft,
pull this dirt up, using a hoist. This windlass known as charkka in
Persian is charkha. It is familiar everywhere in India, as the spinning
wheel noolchakram/ charkka. The principle applied in the windlass and
the spinning wheel are the same.
Wells dug near the paddy fields are found shallow. In hilly areas their
depth goes around 100 metres. In these cases, halfway down the vertical
shaft, a notch is dug to fit a second carkha to facilitate removing the
dirt from one bucket to another at this point. This dirt piled up around
the mouth of the shaft gives the appearance of a little mount. For a
one-kilometer long tunnel with one-half meter diameter, the removal of
rocks amount around 3,000 and 4,000 tons.
Excavation
Madari chah
A well with a depth of 300 feet, capable to accumulate 2 mts of water
overnight situated uphill to the area to be irrigated is the right kind
of mother-well. Before taking up the actual construction of the Qanat,
the Muqanni decides the site of the mother-well ammakkinar known as
maatarisa (madari chah). Matiram is sky. Sunan is wind. The wind as he
breathes in the atmosphere is known as maatarisva(n). Maataa: is
atmosphere. Svas means to breathe. The Qanat originates at the extreme
end from the settlement and is known as maatarisa. Maatiri
antareekshesvayateeti says Patanjali.
The god of wind is known as maatareesvaa(v) and it rhymes with madari
chah. The word means he who enriches in the mother’s womb, in the
atmosphere. Sir Monier Williams defines maatareesvan as the name of Agni
or a divine being closely connected with him. Water is enriched in the
mother-well dug in the cliff. In this context maatareesvaa(v) must be
the original word for the mother-well and the madari chah must be its
metamorphosis.
Gamaneh
Once the potential site for the madari chah is decided, the muqani
concentrates on digging one or more trial shafts. Entrances to these
trial shafts are known as gamaneh. The mother shaft has to make a way
into a relatively constant source of groundwater penetrating the water
table, after weighing a variety of geographical factors. The factors are
local slope conditions, the surrounding landscape, and subtle changes in
vegetation, available groundwater, and the anticipated destination of
the water. Then only it becomes the mother well of the Qanat. Kamaan is
supposed to be a Persian word found in circulation in Malayalam. Its
meaning is a bow, an arc. Kamaanam means an arched door. Kamaanatturavu
is arched door. Gamaneh is the arch door bored into the mother well to
make way for the water to enter the tunnel.
The mother well (umm Al falaj) is the main source of Qanat with
considerable volume of water and its quality is high. But its yield
varies from Qanat to Qanat. Ground-water characteristics, porosity of
the soil and the season are the determinants in this regard.
Mazhar
At mazhar, water is diverted into lateral tunnels. Then the small
channels lead the water to only one individual garden at a time. The
water of the Qanat at the place where it emerges on the surface is not
used profusely. It is consumed in plots of land under cultivation miles
away. This tunnel adit is the exit of a Qanat similar to a mine entrance
and is known as mazhar, the cave in the mount. This cleft is malamuza in
Malayalam, and rhymes with mazhar.
Devaguhi is Saraswathi. Likewise, a cave is Devakhaatam built by Devas.
A natural lake or a pool before a temple is akhaatam. They were dug by
the Devas and not by mortals. As such they are known as akhaatam/
devakhaata(kam).
Access shafts
A Qanat consists of an angled tunnel bringing water from a source to
fields or villages. Periodic holes or shafts connect the tunnel with the
surface. The trial shaft that struck water becomes the mother well of
the Qanat. Once the collection gallery of the mother well is dug, the
builders move down slope and decide the destination point, where water
surfaces. The distance between mother well and the mazhar, is the length
of the well. The excavation of the tunnel starts by burrowing from
there, back; they hollow it out with hammer and chisel (rukhani).
Crouching in the tunnel, just enough for the worker to crawl through is
dug back almost horizontally toward the mother well. The length of the
tunnel can be determined by measuring from the mother well to the place
where water surfaces (mazhar).
This distance between the place where water emerges on the ground and
the place where it is used is known as Heranj. The tunnel is necessarily
dug at a slight incline, say, at a gradient of 1/500 to 1/2,500, to
enable gravity to convey the water from the source to its destination
kilometers away and to prevent erosion and siltation. The length varies
according to the nature of the terrain. Successive vertical shafts
connect the tunnel with the surface every 20 meters, and they vary in
their depth according to the depth of the underground tunnel. In some
cases, these shafts are dug first, and the tunnel is chiselled
subsequently connecting their bases.
At the mouth of these shafts a ring of burned clay is built to prevent
flood water from entering the tunnel. These rings also provide a
protective cover to prevent animal and people from falling into it. The
tunnel that passes through a deposit of soft sand is likely to collapse.
The baked clay hoops, inserted in the tunnel to provide extra support,
are called nays. In Arabic nai is reed pipe. In Malayalam naali/ naalam
is pipe.
These holes of the successive vertical shafts sunk to excavate the
horizontal tunnel of a Qanat, appear to one viewing from the air like a
line of anthills, stretching for miles. They indicate the course of the
Qanat from the source to the oasis. Correct alignment of the Qanat will
connect the water-filled base of the mother well with a point on the
surface immediately above the settlement by means of a gently sloping
tunnel. If it fails, the Qanat emerges some distance away from the
settlement, with hazardous effects.
The holes, left open after the underground canal was completed, enabled
subsequent inspection and repair. The access shafts built along the
tunnel are used both in the initial construction of the tunnel and for
purposes of maintenance, as it is necessary to clear the silt from the
channel regularly to maintain the flow of water and also to provide
ventilation as well.
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