And This Practice
Was Said To Be Very Good For The Health.[NOTE 4] If Any One Desires To
Offer A Gross Insult To Another, When He Meets Him He Spits This Leaf Or
Its Juice In His Face.
The other immediately runs before the King, relates
the insult that has been offered him, and demands leave to fight the
offender.
The King supplies the arms, which are sword and target, and all
the people flock to see, and there the two fight till one of them is
killed. They must not use the point of the sword, for this the King
forbids.][NOTE 5]
NOTE 1. - KAIL, now forgotten, was long a famous port on the coast of what
is now the Tinnevelly District of the Madras Presidency. It is mentioned
as a port of Ma'bar by our author's contemporary Rashiduddin, though the
name has been perverted by careless transcription into Bawal and
Kabal. (See Elliot, I. pp. 69, 72.) It is also mistranscribed as
Kabil in Quatremere's publication of Abdurrazzak, who mentions it as "a
place situated opposite the island of Serendib, otherwise called Ceylon,"
and as being the extremity of what he was led to regard as Malabar (p.
19). It is mentioned as Cahila, the site of the pearl-fishery, by Nicolo
Conti (p. 7). The Roteiro of Vasco da Gama notes it as Caell, a state
having a Mussulman King and a Christian (for which read Kafir) people.
Here were many pearls. Giovanni d'Empoli notices it (Gael) also for the
pearl-fishery, as do Varthema and Barbosa. From the latter we learn that
it was still a considerable seaport, having rich Mahomedan merchants, and
was visited by many ships from Malabar, Coromandel, and Bengal. In the
time of the last writers it belonged to the King of Kaulam, who generally
resided at Kail.
The real site of this once celebrated port has, I believe, till now never
been identified in any published work. I had supposed the still existing
Kayalpattanam to have been in all probability the place, and I am again
indebted to the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Caldwell for conclusive and most
interesting information on this subject. He writes:
"There are no relics of ancient greatness in Kayalpattanam, and no
traditions of foreign trade, and it is admitted by its inhabitants to be a
place of recent origin, which came into existence after the abandonment of
the true Kayal. They state also that the name of Kayalpattanam has only
recently been given to it, as a reminiscence of the older city, and that
its original name was Sonagarpattanam.[1] There is another small port in
the same neighbourhood, a little to the north of Kayalpattanam, called
Pinna Cael in the maps, properly Punnei-Kayal, from Punnei, the Indian
Laurel; but this is also a place of recent origin, and many of the
inhabitants of this place, as of Kayalpattanam, state that their ancestors
came originally from Kayal, subsequently to the removal of the Portuguese
from that place to Tuticorin.
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