South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c11.36

c11.36

There is one other place that is to be settled, and that is Jalkoṭṭa. It is not possible to offer as satisfactory an identification of this place as there is nothing further to lead us to an identification except the name. If Jalkoṭṭa means anything at all, it must be water-fortress; and I take it, it apparently refers to an island protected by deep waters round it. The only place in the vicinity that I could think of is the famous Devakoṭṭa of the early British Campaigns at the mouth of the Coleroon. There are the remains of huge brick walls, of bricks of the same kind and size as those found in Gaṅgaikoṇḍaśolapuram. One of the walls in the island at the mouth showed three parts—two brick walls of 2 to 2½ feet thick with an intervening mud wall about 6 feet. Another bit could be seen about five to six miles up the river and the present bed of the Coleroon seems to occupy the place of the rest of it. The course of the river has changed a great deal in the last few centuries. I am led to this suggestion by the strength of the fort on the island of which we have a very good description from the Jesuit priest Pimenta at the commencement of the seventeenth century, in addition to what we get from a number of works in Sanskrit and Telugu bearing on Tanjore history.¹ It was a place of considerable strength and great importance in the wars of the Portuguese and the Tanjore kings. It probably had this importance three centuries earlier, and was a place of refuge to monarchs of the Chola and the Pāṇḍya dynasties that held sway in this tract of country. That we have to look for these places in the Chola country and not in the Pāṇḍya is quite certain, as Amir Khusru takes us in a separate campaign to ‘Southern Mathra’ (Madura), and as a supplement, to a campaign against Fatan, the capital, apparently of another Pāṇḍya, (may be Vīra himself), which, as was already indicated, must be looked for about Rāmēśvaram.