"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.
"The Cail of Marco Polo, commonly called in the neighbourhood Old Kayal,
and erroneously named Koil in the Ordnance Map of India, is situated on
the Tamraparni River, about a mile and a half from its mouth. The Tamil
word kayal means 'a backwater, a lagoon,' and the map shows the
existence of a large number of these kayals or backwaters near the mouth
of the river. Many of these kayals have now dried up more or less
completely, and in several of them salt-pans have been established. The
name of Kayal was naturally given to a town erected on the margin of a
kayal; and this circumstance occasioned also the adoption of the name of
Punnei Kayal, and served to give currency to the name of Kayalpattanam
assumed by Sonagarpattanam, both those places being in the vicinity of
kayals.
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