South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.8

c9.s2.8

¹ Yule’s Marco Polo: New Edn. by H. Cordier II. 332-8. H. Cordier in his new work ‘New Light on Ser Marco Polo’ has an additional note on this on p. 112. Quoting from Chau Jua Kua a passage extracted in Ma Tuan-lin and the Sung-shi, he states the Chola capital was five li distant from the sea, though the latter have 5,000 in place of five. He adopts Yule’s suggestion that Kaveripaṭam, the ‘Paṭṭaṇam’ par excellence of the Coromandal Coast, and at one of the mouths of the Kaveri, was the then Chola capital. Kaveripaṭam is not mentioned in any of the large number of the inscriptions of the time known to me; nor have I come across any reference to it in the literature of the period. If ‘all figures connected with Chu-lien in Chinese accounts are inexplicably exaggerated,’ and if a ‘Paṭṭaṇam’ was the Chola capital, Gangaikonda-paṭṭaṇam, already referred to on p. 56 must be the city meant. There is a reference, in another Chinese authority (ibid p. 114) to Pa-tan where there was a stūpa. This undoubtedly refers to Negapatam, and would justify my conclusion that there were several ports referred to by this abbreviated designation.