The Kerala chiefdoms

Who rules

Name

not known as one person

Title

no king; a set of chiefs (swarupams), temple assemblies and merchant corporations

Since

the Chera Perumal kingdom of Mahodayapuram ended in the early twelfth century (conventionally about 1122)

Family

Venad (Kulasekhara line, matrilineal swarupams Trippappoor, Desinganadu and Chiravay), the Kolathiri (Mushika line), Perumpadappu, Valluvanad (Arangottu), Eranad (Nediyiruppu)

Confidence

low

Wikipedia (Chera, Venad, Kolathunadu, Cochin, Valluvanad, Zamorin pages) and the campaign board. Names of the chiefs on 1 January 1200 are known only for Venad, and there only from two late and disagreeing lists.

Overlord

none for most; Venad's southern edge (Nanjinad) lies between a Pandya claim and a Chola one

What the realm holds

• Kollam (Quilon), the emporium, on the neck between the sea and the Ashtamudi water
• Kodungallur (Mahodayapuram) with its silting harbour, the Bhagavathy temple and the Jewish and Christian quarters
• the pepper and cardamom foothills and the river roads to the shore
• the Bharatapuzha crossing and the Palghat gap road
• the Vembanad backwater and the rice of Kuttanad
• the Mamankam ground at Tirunavaya (Valluvanad)
• the north Malabar ports of Dharmadam, Kannur, Madayi, Valapattanam (Kolathiri)

How it was acquired

By the fall of the Perumals in the early twelfth century; Venad kept the old Kollam seat, Kolathunadu the north, and the central houses inherited the plain.

Allies and rivals

Chiefs fight over the central plain and the Bharatapuzha; the two blocs of Nambudiri villages (Sukapuram/Chowaram and Panniyur) pull the chiefs into a standing alignment. The Pandyas claim overlordship of Venad's south (Maravarman Sri Vallabha, 1139-1169, left inscriptions at Suchindram and Puravari) and the Cholas hit Venad in 1182 when the beaten Pandya Vira Pandya took refuge there (Wikipedia, Venad). The Hoysalas reach the Wayanad edge but have no hold on the coast.

Alupas of Tulunadu face the Kolathiri across the Chandragiri.

The realm that morning

Quiet, rich and divided. The Kollam year is 375 (the Kollam era began in 825). The trading year is the pattern of the whole coast: ships come on the north-east monsoon in the winter months, loading runs from about October to April, and from June to September the sea is shut. The Eradis are inland and the shore of Polanad has its own chief.

Wealth

Pepper first of all (a vine trained up living trees, grown by hill cultivators and bought by inland middlemen), then ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, teak and timber, coconut and coir, areca, rice from Kuttanad and Nanjinad, elephants; ship-building at Beypore and Kollam. Tolls on the ghat tracks and the river landings; shares of cargo taken by the chiefs, who do not run the commerce but grant corporations the right to run it.

Military

Each chief calls out Nair militia trained in kalari grounds; swords, shields, spears and bows, almost no horses. No numbers survive for 1200. Temples and Brahmin villages arm tenants in their own quarrels.

Threats

• Pandya (and behind them Chola) pressure on Venad's south in Nanjinad
• Feuds between the Nambudiri blocs and the chiefs who back them
• A Hoysala or Alupa move on the Wayanad passes and the Kasaragod march

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. October 1199 to April 1200The loading season: Arab and Chinese ships are at Kollam, Kodungallur and the north ports; pepper is bought, weighed and shipped.Depends on: The north-east monsoon winds and open bars. Stopped by: Nothing in the year; a storm or a chiefs' war at a landing.
2. 1 June to 30 September 1200The south-west monsoon shuts the coast; no ship sails.Depends on: The seasonal wind. Stopped by: Nothing.
3. mid-August 1200 (Chingam)Kollam year 376 begins.Depends on: The Kollam era calendar, which counts from 825. Stopped by: Nothing.

Places of note

• Kollam: Venad seat and the emporium
• Kodungallur: old Perumal capital, silting harbour

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry names Vira Rama Varma as Venad's king. Wikipedia carries two lists: Vira Rama Varma c. 1195-c. 1205 (list 2) and 'Manikantha / Vira / Sri Aditya Rama Varma' 1196-1209 (list 1). Both agree that the man on 1 January 1200 is called Vira Rama Varma or Aditya Rama Varma; neither is an inscription.
• The campaign board entry calls Kozhikode a beach and Polanad under a Porlathiri; the town grows in the thirteenth century. Wikipedia agrees the emergence of Calicut is after the thirteenth century.
• The campaign board entry gives Kanyakumari, Kottar, Suchindram and the Nanjinad rice country as Kerala places; they lie on modern Tamil Nadu ground that sit's sheet leaves to this one. We cover them in Venad (Nanjinad drawn contested), Kanyakumari (the Cape), Kottar (Nagercoil) and Suchindram.
• Later facts kept out of the text: the title Zamorin is first recorded in 1342 (Ibn Battuta, per Wikipedia, Zamorin of Calicut); the Cochin harbour opens with the Periyar flood of 1341 (Wikipedia, Kingdom of Cochin); the Portuguese arrive after 1498.

Evidence: The shape of the polity is firm (many chiefdoms, no king); the names and dates of chiefs are mostly late reconstructions.

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

On the map: A single polygon for a coast that is divided among half a dozen chiefs and thirty Brahmin villages; internal borders are not known for 1200.

Primary sources for this realm

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.

• 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
• The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean. Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online