The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c17.17

c17.17

The horse trade of Kāyal was of considerable political importance and a good part of the revenues of the kingdom was spent on the purchase of horses for the king and the army. There is a reference to horse-dealers from Travancore in an inscription of the time (No. 161 of 1907). Marco Polo says: 'Here are no horses bred; and thus a great part of the wealth of the country is wasted in purchasing horses; I will tell you how. You must know that the merchants of Kis and Hormes, Dofar and Soer and Aden collect great numbers of destriers and other horses and these they bring to the territories of this King and of his four brothers, who are Kings likewise as I told you. For a horse will fetch among them 500 saggi of gold, worth more than 100 marks of silver, and vast numbers are sold there every year.' Wassaf's statements about this trade are even more specific and furnish interesting details. 'It was a matter of agreement that Maliku-l Islām Jamāluddin and the merchants should embark every year from the island of Kais and land at Ma'bar 1,400 horses of his own breed, and of such generous origin that, in comparison with them the most celebrated horses of antiquity, such as the Rukhs of Rustam, etc., should be as worthless as the horse of the chess-board. It was also agreed that he should embark as many as he could procure from all the isles of Persia, such as Katif, Lahsa, Bahrein, Hurmuz and Kulhatu. The price of each horse was fixed from of old at 220 dinars of red gold (= 440 saggi of Polo) on this condition, that if any horses should sustain any injury during the voyage, or should happen to die, the value of them should be paid from the royal treasury.'¹