The argument on which Murray rests is chiefly the position in which Polo introduces his description of Coilon, after Maabar, and before Comari; Maabar being with him an extensive region of Coromandel, and Comari doubtless the country about Cape Comorin. But, omitting detailed discussion of the value of this argument, which would involve a consideration of all the other difficulties in reducing to geographical order Polo’s notices of the kingdoms on the coast of India, his description of Coilon as a great port for pepper and brazil-wood, is sufficient to identify it as on the coast of Malabar. The existence of places called Coulan on the east coast in the maps of D’Anville, Rennel, and Milburn, is of little moment, for an inspection of the “Atlas of India” will show scores of places so-called on both sides of Cape Comorin, the word signifying, in the Tamul tongue, ‘an irrigation tank, formed by damming up natural hollows.’ Indeed, though I have found no trace of any well-known port on the east coast so-called, there were at least four ports of the name on the west coast frequented by foreign vessels, viz., Cote Colam, north of Cananore; Colam, called Pandarani, north of Calicut; Cai-Colam, or Kaincolam,[37] between Cochin and the chief place of the name; Coulam, or Quilon, the Columbum of our author.
We know that Kulam, on the coast of Malabar, was founded in the ninth century, and that its foundation formed an era from which dates were reckoned in Malabar.[38] In that same century we find[39] that the sailing directions for ships making the China voyage from the Persian Gulf, were to go straight from Maskát to Kulam Malé, a place evidently, both from name and fact, on the coast of Malabar. Here there was a custom-house, where ships from China paid their dues.
The narrative of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela is very hazy. He calls Chulan only seven days from El-Cathif (which is a port on the west coast of the Persian Gulf), “and on the confines of the country of the Sun-worshippers.” However, his description of the pepper-gardens adjoining the city, the black Jews, etc., identify it with one of the Kulams on the Malabar coast, and doubtless with Quilon, which was the chief of them.
Then comes Polo’s notice of Coilon already alluded to, followed by our author’s mention of it, and residence there.
It is probable that the Polumbrum or Polembum of his contemporaries Odoricus and Mandevill, are corrupt readings of the name of Kulam or Columbum. The former describes this place as at the head of the pepper forest towards the south, and as abounding in all sorts of merchandize; Mandevill adding, “thither go merchants often from Venice to buy pepper and ginger.”
Ibn Batuta, only half a century after Polo, is quite clear in his description of Kaulam, as the seat of an infidel king, the last city on the Malabar coast, and frequented by many Mahomedan merchants. He also says that Kaulam, Calicut, and Hílí were the only ports entered by the ships of China.
So also Conti, early in the fifteenth century, on his return from the Eastern Archipelago, departing from Champa (Cambodia), doubtless in one of those same ships of China, after a month’s voyage arrives at Coloen, a noble city, three days from Cochin, and “situated in the province called Melibaria.”
Coming down to later times, Barbosa, in the first years of the sixteenth century, speaks of Coulon still as the great pepper port, the seat of one of the three (chief) kings of Malabar, and where lived many Moors, Gentiles, and Christians, who were great merchants, and had many ships trading to Coromandel, Ceylon, Bengal, Pegu, Malacca, Sumatra, etc.
Here, however, at last, we find something to justify Marco Polo in regard to the position in which he introduces the kingdom of Coilon. For, after speaking of Coulam on the Malabar coast, Barbosa goes forward to Cape Comorin, where he says the country of Malabar indeed terminates, but the “aforesaid kingdom of Coulam” still goes on and comes to an end at the city of Cail, where the King of Coulam made his continual residence. So also the “Summary of kingdoms,” etc., in Ramusio, describes the kingdom of Colam as extending on both sides of Cape Comorin.
It is intelligible, therefore, that Marco, coming upon territory belonging to the kingdom of Coilon, before reaching Cape Comorin, should proceed to speak of the city of that name, though it lay upon the western coast. But there is in this no ground for asserting, as Mr. Murray does, that “the place of that name described by Marco and other early Europeans lay to the east of that great promontory.” We have seen that a regular catena of authorities, from the ninth to the sixteenth century, concurs in representing Coulam, Kulam, Coloen, Coilon (Quilon), on the coast of Malabar, as the great entrepôt of trade with east and west, and there can be no reasonable doubt that this is the Columbum which was the seat of our author’s mission.