The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s1.22

c35.s1.22

Tamil Land had the good fortune to possess three precious commodities not procurable elsewhere, namely, pepper, pearls, and beryls. Pepper fetched an enormous price in the markets of Europe, and was so highly prized that when Alaric the Goth levied his war indemnity from Rome, in A. D. 409, his terms included the delivery of 3,000 pounds of pepper.¹ The pearl fishery of the southern sea, which still is productive and valuable, had been worked for untold ages, and always had attracted a crowd of foreign merchants. The beryl or aquamarine gem, which, as Pliny truly observed, is closely related to the emerald, was highly esteemed by both Indians and Romans, and often furnished material for the choicest achievements of the engraver's art. Its scarcity, except in India, tempted clever Indian forgers to fabricate imitations made from rock-crystal. Three Indian mines are recorded, namely, (1) Punnāta, where Ptolemy noted that beryl was found, close to Kittūr on the Kabbani river, a tributary of the Kāvirī (Cauvery) in the south-west of Mysore ; (2) Padiyūr or Pattiāli, 40 miles ESE. from the town of Coimbatore, where a mine was worked successfully as late as 1820 ; and (3) Vāniyambādi, in the north-eastern corner of the Salem District, not far from the Kolar gold-field. The large and numerous hoards of Roman gold coins found in the districts where the mines were situated, testify to the activity of ancient commerce in the gems of Southern India. The fact that the mineral corundum, a variety of the ruby and sapphire, found abundantly in Salem and Coimbatore, bears a purely Tamil name (*kurrandam*), affords another indication of the familiarity of ancient Europe with the products of the Indian gem mines.²