South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.16.1

c9.s2.16.1

Muhammadans in the Pāṇḍya country.—It was not the Muhammadan invasions from the north that brought the Muhammadans into this country for the first time. Muhammadan intercourse with the west coast of India seems to have begun much earlier; and we have considerable evidence of pre-Mussalman trade of the Arabs and other people with it. Arab settlements, after the introduction of Muhammadanism, were made in several places on the coast whose principal object was merely trade, for which the Hindu states of the interior apparently gave all facilities. The piratical character of the West Coast appears to have made the coast of the Konkan except for the northern ports of Kambay and Broach, as far down as Bombay undesirable for these foreign traders, possibly along with the dangers of getting close to the shore in the monsoon weather. There was besides the peculiar custom of the land that vessels driven ashore by stress of weather became the property of the authorities of the port into which it happened to be driven.¹ The governments of the east coast on the contrary seem to have pursued a more enlightened policy as the charters to the oversea traders of the Kākatiya Gaṇapati and the Reḍḍi Chief Vēma indicate.