Pearl coast

Who he is

Name

not named in any source we reached

Title

Headmen of the Paravar fishing and diving community and the crown's port officers

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

The Paravars are the boat and diving people of the Gulf of Mannar coast (their headmen with the title patangatti are recorded from the sixteenth century, which we do not carry back).

Confidence

low

The pearl fishery, chank fishing and horse landings of the Pandya coast are described in the brief and in later travellers (Marco Polo in the 1290s, Wassaf about 1300); no source we reached names a port officer or a Paravar headman of 1200.

Overlord

Jatavarman Kulasekara I Pandya

What it holds

• Korkai on the Tamraparni's old mouth, silting inland
• Kayal (Kayalpattinam) and Punnaikayal with the horse landings
• Kulasekarapattinam (a port named for a Pandya Kulasekara; whether for the reigning king or an earlier one is not known to me)
• Tiruchendur, Manapad and Tuticorin as shore harbours and camps
• Tondi, Periyapattinam, Devipattinam and Kilakarai on the Palk Bay
• The crown's share of the pearl fishery and the right to farm it to merchants

How it was acquired

By the Pandya kings from the earliest times; the port of Korkai goes back to the Sangam age and is silting by 1200.

Allies and rivals

The crown, the Paravar headmen, the Muslim merchants of Kayal and Kilakarai and the horse dealers from the Gulf all share the shore. The ports are exposed to Sinhalese seaborne raids across the Mannar strait.

How things stand that morning

Quiet and rich. The March-April fishery of 1200 and the winter horse landings are the main events of the year. Whether a Chola official sits at Kayal or Tondi, or whether the Pandya king farms out the shore, is not recorded in the pages we reached.

Wealth

Pearls and chank; port dues and horse-landing tolls; the Gulf trade; salt pans and fishing.

Military

Coasting craft and a harbour guard; no number is given.

Threats

• A barren pearl bank (the banks come and go)
• A Sinhalese or Chola seaborne move on the Mannar strait
• A cyclone season (the north-east monsoon)

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. March and April 1200Pearl fishery: the camp on the beach, the oysters taxed in kind.Depends on: A flat sea and a good bank. Stopped by: A barren bank.
2. November 1200 to March 1201Horse landings at Kayal and the Ramnad ports.Depends on: The ships of the Gulf making the passage. Stopped by: A Gulf shipping failure.

Places of note

• Korkai: The old pearl port, silting up.
• Kayal (Kayalpattinam): The main port of the Pandya horse and pearl trade.
• Punnaikayal: River port at the Tamraparni's mouth.
• Kulasekarapattinam: Port on the Karamaniyar's mouth; the name is that of a Pandya king.
• Tondi: Palk Bay port, trade to Lanka and the eastern sea.
• Kilakarai: Muslim trading port on the Ramnad coast.
• Manapad headland: Headland harbour on the pearl coast.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board says the Marakkayar hold a royal charter over the pearl fisheries (korkai, kayal-kayalpattinam notes); we found no source for a charter in 1200 and carry only the Muslim merchant community as a fact of the later centuries.
• The campaign board has Korkai on the coast; it is now about two to three miles inland on the Tamraparni's silted delta and by 1200 the port has moved to Kayal. The gazetteer does not hold Korkai; we give coordinates from the campaign board.
• Kulasekarapattinam is not a board place; it is added from the assignment. It is the port town near Tiruchendur on the coast south of Tuticorin, named for a Pandya Kulasekara, and the name is not dated by anything we read.

Evidence: The institutions are described in the brief and in later travellers; nothing dated names a person or an office for 1200.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: The coast is drawn as a Pandya strip; who actually collected the dues in 1200 is not recorded.

Primary sources for Pandya kingdom

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Lesser Chronicle (the continuation of the Mahavamsa), Dhammakitti and later monks of the Mahavihara tradition (the first continuation about the 13th century (chapters 37 to 79), carried on in stages to the 18th century). The only narrative source for Lanka in 1200. Read online
• Epigraphia Carnatica: inscriptions of the Mysore country, Various (Hoysala chancery and temple scribes), edited by B. Lewis Rice and R. Narasimhachar (inscriptions of the 4th to 19th centuries; the series ran from 1886 to 1905, revised from 1972). The Hoysala kingdom of Veera Ballala II (reigning 1173 to 1220) is documented almost wholly by the inscriptions in this series, arranged by district and taluk with full English translations. Read online
• Epigraphia Zeylanica: lithic and other inscriptions of Ceylon, Various (the Polonnaruwa kings' chanceries), edited by D. M. de Zilva Wickremasinghe, H. W. Codrington and S. Paranavitana (inscriptions of the 3rd century BC to the 18th century; the series ran from 1904). Prints with translation the stone records of the Polonnaruwa kings who held or lost the throne around 1200. Read online
• South Indian Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India), Various (Chola, Pandya and other chanceries and temple scribes), edited by E. Hultzsch, V. Venkayya, H. Krishna Sastri and successors (inscriptions of the 7th to 17th centuries; the series ran from 1890). The temple inscriptions printed here are the primary record of the Tamil country in 1200. Read online
• Travancore Archaeological Series, Various (Kerala chiefs, temples and merchant guilds), edited by T. A. Gopinatha Rao, K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer and A. S. Ramanatha Ayyar (inscriptions of the 9th to 18th centuries; the series ran from 1910 to 1938). The main corpus for the Kerala coast. Read online