South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.7

Language: English

c9.s2.7.1

Marco Polo.—Marco Polo calls the province that he first touched after leaving Ceylon Ma'bar, the usual Musalman designation of the Coromandal Coast extending from Kulam (Quilon) to Nilawar (Nellore). Marco Polo sailed westward from his port of embarkation for a distance of about sixty miles till he came to the province of Ma'bar, which he says was styled ‘India the Greater.’ According to him it is the best of the Indies and is on the mainland. He refers to the coast wherein he landed as among the possessions of the Pāṇḍyas, and of whom at the time there were five brothers ruling. ‘Sonder Bandi Dēvar’ (Sundara Pāṇḍya Dēvar), was the crowned king. He undertook to give a detailed account of the five provinces of the kingdom ruled by these brothers, and forgot to fulfil his promise. But the province that he describes at some length is ‘the finest and noblest in the world’, and was the sphere of Sundara Pāṇḍya. He refers apparently to the fishery coast where pearl fishing was the principal industry. This must be borne in mind to understand his itinerary. The port he visited on this coast has much exercised the ingenuity of scholars, and from various considerations both Yule and Cordier would refer the port to Kaveripaṭam.¹ The lead is taken by all these authorities from the statement of the Muhammadan writer Wassaf that Fittan, Mali Fittan and Kabil constituted the famous ports of which Takhiud-din Abdur-Rahman was the Marzaban (Margrave).

c9.s2.7.2

These three names are obviously Paṭṭaṇam, Mēlai Paṭṭaṇam, and Kāyal or Kāyal Paṭṭaṇam in the language of the locality. Kāyal, according to Marco Polo, was the premier port, whereto came all merchants from the east as well as the west, and from all over India, for purposes of trade. The other two stand in some geographical relation with this one. The words would stand, the port and the upper port, the term paṭṭinam meaning port. I believe the port on what is the island now is called Ramēśvara Paṭṭinam, sometimes also Paṭṭinam merely, but at the time of Marco Polo there was another great port on the inner side of the Gulf of Mannar, the ruins of which are now known as Periya Paṭṭaṇam. In the wars of Parākrama Bāhu in favour of one of the Pāṇḍyan princes, and against his brother, he is supposed to have taken on the mainland and in the peninsula, a village called Kundukāla and having fortified it with three circuits of walls and twelve gates, called it Parākrama-paṭṭaṇam, equi-distant from either sea. A little way to the south and on the coast lie the vast ruins of a city called Periya Paṭṭaṇam (large port or city) in the Ramnad Zamindari, already referred to above, where till recently people picked up coins and antiquities of sorts, and I am informed, a considerable portion of the ground plan of the city could still be traced at low water.

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Any one of these three places might do, and that is the place where one would expect a boat sailing from Ceylon to land, having regard in particular to the fact that the port of embarkation at the time seems to have been Puttalam (Bathelar) in Ceylon, the Bhattala of Ibn Batuta; and the distance would be perhaps about sixty miles, a little more or less. We are bound to look for Fitan in that locality as the Mali Fitan seems certainly to be Dēvi Paṭṭaṇam about ten miles north of the town of Ramnad, but on the northern side of the island of Ramēśvaram. A medieval map is said to mark Mali Fatan in or about the locality.¹ For the mere name Paṭṭaṇam there are any number along the coast, more than twenty along the Tanjore coast; of which, at the time to which we are referring, the very town of Topputturai, as it is known at present, was called Vīraśoḷan Paṭṭaṇam; not far was a Kuḷottuṅga-śoḷa-paṭṭaṇam set over against Tirutturaippūṇḍi. A little way to the north of it was Negapatam; Kaveripatam at the mouth of the Kaveri; Jayangoṇḍapaṭṭaṇam near the mouth of the Coleroon and so on. In the Palk Strait itself south of Topputtorai, there is Adirāmpaṭṭaṇam to begin with, the name may be a later one; there is Ammāpaṭṭaṇam, there is Sundara Pāṇḍyan Paṭṭaṇam itself, and any number of paṭṭaṇams like that.

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Battelar, which according to Marco Polo is the place where the ships collect before going on a pearl fishing expedition seems much rather to refer to a port on the continent than to one in Ceylon. We have a port in the peninsula near Maṇḍapam which goes by the name Vēdāḷai now, and it is just on the southern shore of the peninsula, and at the head of the Gulf of Mannar, a convenient starting point for the fisher-folk. There is a harbour to the east of it that is called Toṇitturai even now, apparently the place where boats assembled on their fishing expeditions for pearls.