The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 428 (Color Image)

0428	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2

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 Mâ'bar by our author's contemporary Rashiduddin, though the name has been perverted by careless transcription into Bâval and Kibhal. (See Elliot, I. pp. 69, 72.) It is also mistranscribed as Kihil in Quatremère's publication of Abdurrazzâk, 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 Kâfir) 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 Kâyalpattanam 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 Kâyalpattanam, 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 Kâyal. They state also that the name of Kâyalpattanam has only recently been given to it, as a reminiscence of the older city, and that its original name was Sôngarapattanam.* There is another small port in the same neighbourhood, a little to the north of Kâyalpattanam, called Pinna Cael in the maps, properly Punnei-Kâyal, from Punnei, the Indian Laurel ; but this is also a place of recent origin, and many of the inhabitants of this place, as of Kâyalpattanam, state that their ancestors came originally from Kâyal, subsequently to the removal of the Portuguese from that place to Tuticorin.

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

“KAYAL stood originally on or near the sea-beach, but it is now about a mile and a half inland, the sand carried down by the river having silted up the ancient harbour, and formed a waste sandy tract between the sea and the town. It has now shrunk into a petty village, inhabited partly by Mahommedans and partly by Roman Catholic fishermen of the Parava caste, with a still smaller hamlet adjoining inhabited by Brahmans and Vellalars ; but unlikely as the place may now seem to have been identical with ‘the great and noble city’ described by Marco Polo, its identity is established by the relics of its ancient greatness which it still retains. Ruins of old fortifications, temples, storehouses, wells and tanks, are found everywhere along the coast for two or three miles north of the village of Kayal, and a mile and a half inland ; the whole plain is covered with broken tiles and remnants of pottery, chiefly of China

* “Sôngar or Jôngar is a Tamil corruption of Yavânar, the Yavanas, the name by which the Arabs were known, and is the name most commonly used in the Tamil country to designate the mixed race descended from Arab colonists, who are called Mâpillas on the Malabar coast, and Lubbies in the neighbourhood of Madras.” (Dr. C.’s note)

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books