The Colas c10.11

c10.11

The part taken from the sixth century B.C. by southern India in the growing commerce between the Western countries and those in the East as far as China is sufficiently known.¹⁹ Of the direction and nature of this trade and of its economic importance, something will be said further on. Here we may note that to this commerce we owe, in the main, two valuable notices of Southern India and the Cōḷa country separated by about half a century. The *Periplus Maris Erythraei* is the interesting handbook of an Alexandrian merchant, 'which was written in the time of Domitian A.D. 81-96, and by the evidence furnished by Pliny the Elder.'²⁰ The anonymous author of this short treatise tells us a little about the Cōḷa country in particular which, considering the paucity of early notices of the Coromandel coast, is of uncommon interest to the student of Cōḷa history. He says: ‘Beyond Colchi there follows another district called the coast country, which lies on a bay, and has a region inland called Argaru.’ This statement is best understood as pointing to the division of the Cōḷa country into two parts, a coastal district and an inland district. There is, as we shall see, evidence of Cōḷa rule from two centres at this period—Puhār or Kāvērippaṭṭinam on the coast and Uṟaiyūr inland. *Paṭṭinam*, meaning a port-town, was the name of the Cōḷa capital on the coast, and the phrase in the *Periplus*, ‘the coast country, which lies on a bay’, unmistakably recalls the *Paṭṭinam* of the *Paṭṭinappālai*,²¹ specially as it is placed in contrast with ‘a region inland called Argaru,’ which doubtless is the same as Uṟaiyūr. The author has named each of the districts after its chief town. It is remarkable that, while he knows the name ‘Cerobothra’ and ‘Pandian,’ he does not mention ‘Cōḷa.’ His information on the east coast of India is meagre and apparently based on hearsay.²² He mentions also three market towns and harbours ‘where the ships put in from Damirica and from the north’, which ‘in order as they lie’ are ‘first Camara, then Poduca, then Sopatma’—names now not easily identified,²³ though Sopatma may be the same as Śō-paṭṭinam of Tamil literature, now called Markāṇam.