Batigala, or Batikala, which, he says, had a Saracen king, is a port of Canara, fifty-five miles north of Mangalore; it is called Batcul, or Batcole, in English maps. It is not mentioned by Ibn Batuta, the nearest authority in time; but he does state that at Hinaur (Hunáwur or Onore), a port a little to the north of Baticala, the people were Moslem, and their king “one of the best of princes,” one Jamál ad-Dín Mahommed Ibn Hasan, to whom Malabar generally paid tribute, dreading his bravery by sea, (which means, I suppose, that this excellent prince was a pirate). Very probably this was the king of Batigala to whom Jordanus refers. He was, however, himself “subject to an infidel king, whose name was Horaib” (Lee’s Ibn Batuta, p. 166), doubtless the king of Narsinga or Bisnagur, whom Jordanus omits to mention. Two centuries later Barbosa describes Batticala as a great place, where many merchants trafficked, and where were many Moors and Gentiles, great merchants. And the “Summary of Kingdoms,” in Ramusio, says the king of Baticula was then a Gentile Canarese, “greater than him of Honor;” the governor, however, being a Moorish eunuch, named Caipha. Later in the sixteenth century, Vincent Le Blanc describes it as still a fine place, and one of great trade.
The great king of Molebar, or Malabar, is, I suppose, the Samudra Raja, or Zamorin of the Portuguese, whose capital was at Calicut.
Singuyli is a nut hard to crack. Our friar’s contemporary, Odoricus, calls the two chief ports of the pepper country in his day Flandrina and Cyncilim. The former is no doubt the Fandaraina of Ibn Batuta, “a large and beautiful place,” the Colam Pandarani of Ramusio’s Geographer, lying a little north of Calicut, but not marked in our modern maps. (The lying Mandevill says it was called Flandrina after Flanders by Ogero the Dane, who conquered those parts!) Cyncilim I suspect to be Kain Kulam or Cai Colam, one of the old ports a few miles north of Quilon, and formerly a little kingdom. Singuyli is not very like Kain Kulam, but Cyncilim is somewhat like both; and the position in which he mentions it, between Calicut and Quilon, would suit.
As for Chopa, I suspect it to be a misreading (Chãpa, read as Chopa), for Champa, whereby he seems to mean hazily India ultra Gangem in general, though the name belongs to Cambodia.
[150] India Tertia is apparently Eastern Africa, south of Abyssinia.
[151] So far we have the old Herodotean myth (Her., iii. 116), which Milton has rendered into stately verse—
“As when a gryphon in the wilderness
With winged course, o’er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined