South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c13.s1.61

c13.s1.61

I doubt very much that we are warranted in thus altering the account of Marco Polo. The place that he landed in would depend entirely upon the port he left in Ceylon and one would rather be inclined to take it that his indication sixty miles from Ceylon should rather be taken for our guide. While there is absolutely no doubt that Ibn Batuta embarked at Puttalam (Batthela) in Ceylon, the Ceylon general seems to have embarked from a place much farther north and after sailing a day and a night he disembarked at the eastern end of the island of Rāmēśvaram. That may be a distance of about sixty miles, a little more or less. As Marco Polo was coming from the east one would naturally expect that he touched at a northern port somewhere in Jaffna and he gives a westward direction and sixty miles of sailing distance. I believe he meant to be precise, and when he goes the length of describing that it is the pearl fishery country we find he was warranted in so saying. The pearl country was not confined to ‘the Gulf of Mannar, south of the Rāmēśvaram shallows’ as Sir Henry Yule seems to take it. There are two divisions which go by the name Miḷalai-Kūṟṟam and Muttūṟṟu-Kūṟṟam which find reference in classical Tamil literature. The latter, certainly means the division where ‘pearl springs,’ meaning no more than that the pearl-oyster is produced and could be fished for there as in other place. We have a record in Hanumantaguḍi about a mile and a half east of Dēvakoṭṭa, which refers to a particular village as being in Muttūṟṟu-kūṟṟam, and, to give us further lead as it were, the village Anjukkoṭṭai is also said to be in that division. Dēvakoṭṭa and Anjukkoṭṭai are not very far from each other, the latter being a few miles from Kāḷaiyār Kovil. This division was known to have been productive of pearls in early days and a recent investigation in the port of Toṇḍi due east from Kāḷaiyār Kovil did show the existence of pearl, though not of a promising kind. It might have been a more fertile field for pearls in earlier times. The other division referred to is just on the north of it along the coast and reaches into the Chola country flanking Puḍukoṭṭa. It is one of the ports in this (Muttūṟṟuk-kūṟṟam) region that Polo certainly visited as, according to classical Tamil literature, Toṇḍi was the great mart of the eastern Chinese trade. This is generally called in these authorities Śoḷan Toṇḍi to distinguish it from Kuṭṭuvan (Chēra) Toṇḍi. In this particular, Marco Polo is apparently right and modern commentators wrong. In regard to the fertility of the country, from such descriptions as we get of it, the region must have been a very fertile spot centuries ago and surely that was included in the territory both of Sundara Pāṇḍya, and after him, his successor Vīra Pāṇḍya, the enemy of the Muhamadans.