| For a few minutes on Dec. 26, after the water had receded far from the shore and before it came raging back as a tsunami, the fishermen stood along the beach and stared at the reality of generations of legends.
Or so they say. Spread across nearly a mile, the site was encrusted with barnacles and covered in mud. But the fishermen insist they saw the remains of ancient temples and hundreds of refrigerator-size blocks, all briefly exposed before the sea swallowed them up again.
"You could see the destroyed walls covered in coral, and the broken-down temple in the middle," said Durai, a fisherman who, like many south Indians, uses only one name. "My grandfathers said there was a port here once and a temple, but suddenly we could see it was real."
Whatever they saw is back under water and out of sight. But a few hundred yards away, something else came to the surface. In this village on the east coast, south of Madras, the tsunami scrubbed away six feet of sand from a section of beach, uncovering a cluster of boulders carved with animals, gods and servant girls.
...Archaeologists say excavations were already under way before the tsunami struck, and that divers made some promising finds.
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