[Transcriber’s Note: There is no Paragraph 59]
60. Among the marts and anchorages along this shore to which merchants from Limurikê and the north resort, the most conspicuous are Kamara and Podoukê and Sôpatma, which occur in the order in which we have named them. In these marts are found those native vessels for coasting voyages which trade as far as Limurikê, and another kind called sangara, mode by fastening together large vessels formed each of a single timber, and also others called kolandiophônta, which are of great bulk and employed for voyages to Khrusê and the Ganges. These marts import all the commodities which reach Limurikê for commercial purposes, absorbing likewise nearly every species of goods brought from Egypt, and most descriptions of all the goods exported from Limurikê and disposed of on this coast of India.
(60) We now reach the great promontory called in the Periplûs Komar and Komarei, Cape Kumârî. “It has derived its name,” says Caldwell, “from the Sans. Kumârî, a virgin, one of the names of the goddess Durgâ, the presiding divinity of the place, but the shape which this word has taken is, especially in komar, distinctively Tamilian.” In ordinary Tamil Kumârî becomes Kumări; and in the vulgar dialect of the people residing in the neighbourhood of the Cape a virgin is neither Kumârî nor Kumări but Kŭmăr pronounced Kŏmar. It is remarkable that this vulgar corruption of the Sanskrit is identical with the name given to the place by the author of the Periplûs.... The monthly bathing in honor of the goddess Durgâ is still continued at Cape Comorin, but is not practised to the same extent as in ancient times.... Through the continued encroachments of the sea, the harbour the Greek mariners found at Cape Comorin and the fort (if φρουριον is the correct reading for βριάριον of the MS.) have completely disappeared; but a fresh water well remains in the centre of a rock, a little way out at sea. Regarding Kolkhoi, the next place mentioned after Komari, the same authority as we have seen places it (Ind. Ant. vol. VI. p. 80) near Tuticorin. It is mentioned by Ptolemy and in the Peutinger Tables, where it is called ‘Colcis Indorum’. The Gulf of Manaar was called by the Greeks the Colchic Gulf. The Tami[l:] name of the place Kolkei is almost identical with the Greek. “The place,” according to Caldwell, “is now about three miles inland, but there are abundant traces of its having once stood on the coast, and I have found the tradition that it was once the seat of the pearl fishery, still surviving amongst its inhabitants.” After the sea had retired from Κόλχοι ... a new emporium arose on the coast. This was Kâyal, the Cael of Marco Polo. Kâyal in turn became in time too far from the sea ... and Tuticorin (Tûttrukuḍi) was raised instead by the Portuguese from the position of a fishing village to that of the most important port on the southern Coromandel coast. The identification of Kolkoi with Kolkei is one of much importance. Being perfectly certain it helps forward other identifications. Kol. in Tami[l:] means ‘to slay.’ Kei is ‘hand.’ It was the first capital of Pandiôn.
The coast beyond Kolkhoi, which has an inland district belonging to it called Argalou, is indented by a gulf called by Ptolemy the Argarik—now Palk Bay. Ptolemy mentions also a promontory called Kôru and beyond it a city called Argeirou and an emporium called Salour. This Kôru of Ptolemy, Caldwell thinks, represents the Kôlis of the geographers who preceded him, and the Koṭi of Tami[l:], and identifies it with “the island promontory of Râmeśvaram, the point of land from which there was always the nearest access from Southern India to Ceylon.” An island occurs in these parts, called that of Epiodôros, noted for its pearl fishery, on which account Ritter would identify it with the island of Manaar, which Ptolemy, as Mannert thinks, speaks of as Νάνιγηρίς (VII. i. 95). Müller thinks, however, it may be compared with Ptolemy’s Kôru, and so be Râmeśvaram.
This coast has commercial intercourse not only with the Malabar ports, but also with the Ganges and the Golden Khersonese. For the trade with the former a species of canoes was used called Sangara. The Maļayâlam name of these, Caldwell says, is Changâdam, in Tuļa Jangâla, compare Sanskrit Samghâdam a raft (Ind. Ant. vol. I. p. 309). The large vessels employed for the Eastern trade were called Kolandiophonta, a name which Caldwell confesses his inability to explain.
Three cities and ports are named in the order of their occurrence which were of great commercial importance, Kamara, Podoukê, and Sôpatma. Kamara may perhaps be, as Müller thinks, the emporium which Ptolemy calls Khabêris, situated at the mouth of the River Khabêros (now, the Kavery), perhaps, as Dr. Burnell suggests, the modern Kaveripattam. (Ind. Ant. vol. VII. p. 40). Podoukê appears in Ptolemy as Podoukê. It is Puduchchêri, i. e. ‘new town,’ now well known as Pondicherry; so Bohlen, Ritter, and Benfey. [Yule and Lassen place it at Pulikât]. Sôpatma is not mentioned in Ptolemy, nor can it now be traced. In Sanskrit it transliterates into Su-patna, i. e., fair town.
61. Near the region which succeeds, where the course of the voyage now bends to the east, there lies out in the open sea stretching towards the west the island now called Palaisimoundou, but by the ancients Taprobanê. To cross over to the northern side of it takes a day. In the south part it gradually stretches towards the west till it nearly reaches the opposite coast of Azania. It produces pearl, precious (transparent) stones, muslins, and tortoise-shell.
(61) The next place noticed is the Island of Ceylon, which is designated Palaisimoundou, with the remark that its former name was Taprobanê. This is the Greek transliteration of Tâmraparnî, the name given by a band of colonists from Magadha to the place where they first landed in Ceylon, and which was afterwards extended to the whole island. It is singular, Dr. Caldwell remarks, that this is also the name of the principal river in Tinnevelly on the opposite coast of India, and he infers that the colony referred to might previously have formed a settlement in Tinnevelly at the mouth of the Tâmraparṇi river—perhaps at Kolkei, the earliest residence of the Pâṇḍya kings. The passage in the Periplûs which refers to the island is very corrupt.
62.(Returning to the coast,) not far from the three marts we have mentioned lies Masalia, the seaboard of a country extending far inland. Here immense quantities of fine muslins are manufactured. From Masalia the course of the voyage lies eastward across a neighbouring bay to Dêsarênê, which has the breed of elephants called Bôsarê. Leaving Dêsarênê the course is northerly, passing a variety of barbarous tribes, among which are the Kirrhadai, savages whose noses are flattened to the face, and another tribe, that of the Bargusoi, as well as the Hîppioprosôpoi or Makroprosôpoi (the horse faced or long faced men), who are reported to be cannibals.
(62) Recurring to the mainland, the narrative notices a district called Masalia, where great quantities of cotton were manufactured. This is the Maïsôlia of Ptolemy, the region in which he places the mouths of a river the Maisôlos, which Benfey identifies with the Godâvarî, in opposition to others who would make it the Krishnâ, which is perhaps Ptolemy’s Tuna. The name Maisôlia is taken from the Sanskrit Mausala, preserved in Machhlipatana, now Masulipatam. Beyond this, after an intervening gulf running eastward is crossed, another district occurs, Desarênê, noted for its elephants. This is not mentioned by Ptolemy, but a river with a similar name, the Dôsarôn, is found in his enumeration of the rivers which occur between the Maisôlos and the Ganges. As it is the last in the list it may probably be, as Lassen supposes, the Brâhmini. Our author however places Desarênê at a much greater distance from the Ganges, for he peoples the intermediate space with a variety of tribes which Ptolemy relegates to the East of the river. The first of these tribes is that of the Kirrâdai (Sanskrit, Kirâtas), whose features are of the Mongolian type. Next are the Bargusoi, not mentioned by Ptolemy, but perhaps to be identified with the cannibal race he speaks of, the Barousai thought by Yule to be possibly the inhabitants of the Nikobar islands, and lastly the tribe of the long or horse-faced men who were also cannibals.
63. After passing these the course turns again to the east, and if you sail with the ocean to your right and the coast far to your left, you reach the Ganges and the extremity of the continent towards the east called Khrusê (the Golden Khersonese). The river of this region called the Ganges is the largest in India; it has an annual increase and decrease like the Nile, and there is on it a mart called after it, Gangê, through which passes a considerable traffic consisting of betel, the Gangetic spikenard, pearl, and the finest of all muslins—those called the Gangetic. In this locality also there is said to be a gold mine and a gold coin called Kaltis. Near this river there is an island of the ocean called Khrusê (or the Golden), which lies directly under the rising sun and at the extremity of the world towards the east. It produces the finest tortoise-shell that is found throughout the whole of the Erythræan Sea.
(63) When this coast of savages and monsters is left behind, the course lies eastward, and leads to the Ganges, which is the greatest river of India, and adjoins the extremity of the Eastern continent called Khrusê, or the Golden. Near the river, or, according to Ptolemy, on the third of its mouths stands a great emporium of trade called Gangê, exporting Malabathrum and cottons and other commodities. Its exact position there are not sufficient data to determine. Khrusê is not only the name of the last part of the continent, but also of an island lying out in the ocean to eastward, not far from the Ganges. It is the last part of the world which is said to be inhabited. The situation of Khrusê is differently defined by different ancient authors. It was not known to the Alexandrine geographers. Pliny seems to have preserved the most ancient report circulated regarding it. He says (VI. xxiii. 80): “Beyond the mouth of the Indus are Chryse and Argyre abounding in metals as I believe, for I can hardly credit what some have related that the soil consists of gold and silver.” Mela (III. 7) assigns to it a very different position, asserting it to be near Tabis, the last spur of the range of Taurus. He therefore places it where Eratosthenês places Thînai, to the north of the Ganges on the confines of the Indian and Skythian oceans. Ptolemy, in whose time the Transgangetic world was better known, refers it to the peninsula of Malacca, the Golden Khersonese.
64. Beyond this region, immediately under the north, where the sea terminates outwards, there lies somewhere in Thîna a very great city,—not on the coast, but in the interior of the country, called Thîna,—from which silk, whether in the raw state or spun into thread