Possibly The Brothers
Were Adventurers Who Had Divided The Coast Districts, Whilst Kalesa Still
Reigned With A More Legitimate Claim At Shahr-Mandi Or Madura.
And it is
worthy of notice that the Ceylon Annals call the Pandi king whose army
carried off the sacred tooth in 1303 Kulasaikera, a name which we may
easily believe to represent Wassaf's Kalesa.
(Nelson's Madura, 55, 67,
71-74; Turnour's Epitome, p. 47.)
As regards the position of the port of Ma'bar visited, but not named, by
Marco Polo, and at or near which his Sundara Pandi seems to have resided,
I am inclined to look for it rather in Tanjore than on the Gulf of Manar,
south of the Rameshwaram shallows. The difficulties in this view are the
indication of its being "60 miles west of Ceylon," and the special mention
of the Pearl Fishery in connection with it. We cannot, however, lay much
stress upon Polo's orientation. When his general direction is from east to
west, every new place reached is for him west of that last visited;
whilst the Kaveri Delta is as near the north point of Ceylon as Ramnad is
to Aripo. The pearl difficulty may be solved by the probability that the
dominion of Sonder Bandi extended to the coast of the Gulf of Manar.
On the other hand Polo, below (ch. xx.), calls the province of Sundara
Pandi Soli, which we can scarcely doubt to be Chola or Soladesam,
i.e. Tanjore. He calls it also "the best and noblest Province of India,"
a description which even with his limited knowledge of India he would
scarcely apply to the coast of Ramnad, but which might be justifiably
applied to the well-watered plains of Tanjore, even when as yet Arthur
Cotton was not. Let it be noticed too that Polo in speaking (ch. xix.) of
Mutfili (or Telingana) specifies its distance from Ma'bar as if he had
made the run by sea from one to the other; but afterwards when he proceeds
to speak of Cail, which stands on the Gulf of Manar, he does not specify
its position or distance in regard to Sundara Pandi's territory; an
omission which he would not have been likely to make had both lain on
the Gulf of Manar.
Abulfeda tells us that the capital of the Prince of Ma'bar, who was the
great horse-importer, was called Biyardawal,[4] a name which now
appears in the extracts from Amir Khusru (Elliot, III. 90-91) as
Birdhul, the capital of Bir Pandi mentioned above, whilst Madura was the
residence of his brother, the later Sundara Pandi. And from the
indications in those extracts it can be gathered, I think, that Birdhul
was not far from the Kaveri (called Kanobari), not far from the sea, and
five or six days' march from Madura. These indications point to Tanjore,
Kombakonam, or some other city in or near the Kaveri Delta.[5] I should
suppose that this Birdhul was the capital of Polo's Sundara Pandi, and
that the port visited was Kaveripattanam.
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