Note 149 — V. HERE FOLLOWETH CONCERNING INDIA THE GREATER.

The number twelve is only general and conventional. Ibn Batuta says there were twelve kings in Malabar alone, and even a greater number are alluded to by some of the old travellers. It is extremely difficult to trace these kingdoms, both from the looseness of the statements and want of accessible histories of the states of Southern India, and from that absence of any distinction between really substantial monarchies and mere principalities of small account, which may be noticed in Polo and the other travellers of the time as well as in our author.

Telenc, however, he speaks of as a potent and great kingdom. This must have been the kingdom of interior Telingana, called Andra, the capital of which was Warangól, eighty miles north-east of Hyderabad, and which was powerful and extensive at the end of the thirteenth century. It was shortly afterwards invaded by the armies of the king of Delhi; the capital was taken in 1332, and the sovereignty at a later date merged in the Mussulman kingdom of Golkonda.

There does not seem to have been any very great kingdom in the Mahratta country at this time, and perhaps this is the reason why he there speaks of the kingdom, not of the king. The most powerful princes were the rajas of Deogiri (afterwards Daulutabad), of the Yadu family. Their dynasty was subverted by the Mahommedans in 1317. I believe there is no mention of the Mahrattas by the Mussulman historians till just about our author’s time.

Columbum, or Kulam, we have disposed of in the preface. We see here that the kingdom included (part at least of) Mohebar, the Maabar of Marco Polo and of Ibn Batuta, i.e., the southern regions of the Coromandel coast; (see Preface, p. xvi). The name is apparently Arabic (Ma’abar—a ferry), in reference to the passage or ferry to Ceylon. The king, whose name was Lingua, may probably have been connected with the sect of the Lingáyets still existing in Southern India, whose members wear a representation of the Lingam or Sivaite emblem round their necks, and have many peculiar practices. He was certainly a Nair, as appears from what Jordanus has said of the law of succession. And among the rajas of Coorg, who were both Nairs and Lingáyets, we find the name Linga borne by several during the last century. (Compare Markham’s Peru and India; Hamilton’s Hindostan, ii. 288, etc.)

I cannot trace any particulars of a king of Molepoor or Molepatam. But the only pearl fishery on the Indian main is at Tuticorin, about ninety miles north-east of Cape Comorin, and near this there is a place given by Hamilton, called Mooloopetta (= Mooloopatam), which may probably be the seat of the king alluded to. He was most likely the same as the king of Cail, spoken of by Marco Polo; that place being apparently now represented by Coilpatam, a small seaport of Tinnevelly, in this immediate vicinity. This appears from Barbosa, who, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, states precisely that Cail was ninety miles from Cape Comorin, and that it was the seat of a great pearl market and fishery.

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.