Volume II Part 56 (1/2)

Indeed the name of Marabia or _Marawi_ is still preserved in _Madavi_ or Madai, corruptly termed _Maudoy_ in some of our maps, a towns.h.i.+p upor the river which enters the bay about 7 or 8 miles south-east of Mt. d'Ely, and which is called by De Barros the _Rio Marabia_. Mr. Ballard informs me that he never heard of ruins of importance at Madai, but there is a place on the river just mentioned, and within the Madai towns.h.i.+p, called _Payangadi_ (”Old Town”), which has the remains of an old fort of the Kolastri (or Kolatiri) Rajas. A _palace_ at Madai (perhaps this fort) is alluded to by Dr. Gundert in the _Madras Journal_, and a Buddhist Vihara is spoken of in an old Malayalim poem as having existed at the same place.

The same paper speaks of ”the famous emporium of Cachilpatnam near Mt.

d'Ely,” which may have been our city of Hili, as the cities Hili and Marawi were apparently separate though near.[2]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mount d'Ely, from the Sea, in last century.]

The state of _Hili-Marawi_ is also mentioned in the Arabic work on the early history of the Mahomedans in Malabar, called _Tuhfat-al-Mujahidin_, and translated by Rowlandson; and as the Prince is there called _Kolturee_, this would seem to identify him either in family or person with the Raja of Cananor, for that old dynasty always bore the name of _Kolatiri_.[3]

The Ramusian version of Barbosa is very defective here, but in Stanley's version (Hak. Soc. _East African and Malabar Coasts_, p. 149) we find the topography in a pa.s.sage from a Munich MS. clear enough: ”After pa.s.sing this place” (the river of Nirapura or Nileshwaram) ”along the coast is the mountain Dely (of Ely) on the edge of the sea; it is a round mountain, very lofty, in the midst of low land; all the s.h.i.+ps of the Moors and Gentiles that navigate in this sea of India sight this mountain when coming from without, and make their reckoning by it; ... after this, at the foot of the mountain to the south, is a town called _Marave_, very ancient and well off, in which live Moors and Gentiles and Jews; these Jews are of the language of the country; it is a long time that they have dwelt in this place.”

(_Stanley's Correa_, Hak. Soc. pp. 145, 312-313; _Gildem._ p. 185; _Elliot_, I. 68; _I.B._ IV. 81; _Conti_, p. 6; _Madras Journal_, XIII.

No. 31, pp. 14, 99, 102, 104; _De Barros_, III. 9, cap. 6, and IV. 2, cap.

13; _De Couto_, IV. 5, cap. 4.)

NOTE 2.--This is from Pauthier's text, and the map with ch. xxi.

ill.u.s.trates the fact of the many wide rivers. The G.T. has ”a good river with a very good estuary” or mouth. The latter word is in the G.T.

_faces_, afterwards more correctly _foces_, equivalent to _fauces_. We have seen that Ibn Batuta also speaks of the estuary or inlet at Hili. It may have been either that immediately east of Mount d'Ely, communicating with Kavvayi and the Nileshwaram River, or the Madai River. Neither could be entered by vessels now, but there have been great littoral changes. The land joining Mt. d'Ely to the main is mere alluvium.

NOTE 3.--Barbosa says that throughout the kingdom of Cananor the pepper was of excellent quality, though not in great quant.i.ty. There was much ginger, not first-rate, which was called _Hely_ from its growing about Mount d'Ely, with cardamoms (names of which, _Ela_ in Sanskrit, _Hel_ Persian, I have thought might be connected with that of the hill), mirobolans, ca.s.sia fistula, zerumbet, and zedoary. The two last items are two species of _curc.u.ma_, formerly in much demand as aromatics; the last is, I believe, the _setewale_ of Chaucer:--

”There was eke wexing many a spice, As clowe gilofre and Licorice, Ginger and grein de Paradis, Canell and setewale of pris, And many a spice delitable To eaten when men rise from table.”--_R. of the Rose_.

The Hely ginger is also mentioned by Conti.

NOTE 4.--This piratical practice is noted by Abdurrazzak also: ”In other parts (than Calicut) a strange practice is adopted. When a vessel sets sail for a certain point, and suddenly is driven by a decree of Divine Providence into another roadstead, the inhabitants, under the pretext that the wind has driven it thither, plunder the s.h.i.+p. But at Calicut every s.h.i.+p, whatever place it comes from, or wherever it may be bound, when it puts into this port, is treated like other vessels, and has no trouble of any kind to put up with” (p. 14). In 1673 Sivaji replied to the pleadings of an English emba.s.sy, that it was ”against the Laws of Conchon”

(Ptolemy's _Pirate Coast!_) ”to restore any s.h.i.+ps or goods that were driven ash.o.r.e.” (_Fryer_, p. 261.)

NOTE 5.--With regard to the anchors, Pauthier's text has just the opposite of the G.T. which we have preferred: ”_Les nefs du Manzi portent si grans ancres de fust_, que il seuffrent moult _de grans fortunes aus plajes_” De Mailla says the Chinese consider their ironwood anchors to be much better than those of iron, because the latter are subject to strain. (_Lett.

Edif._ XIV. 10.) Capt. Owen has a good word for wooden anchors. (_Narr. of Voyages_, etc., I. 385.)

[1] The Town of Monte d'Ely appears (_Monte Dil_) in Coronelli's Atlas (1690) from some older source. Mr. Burnell thinks Baliapatan (properly _Valarpattanam_) which is still a prosperous Mappila town, on a broad and deep river, must be Hili. I see a little difficulty in this.

[Marabia at Monte Dely is often mentioned in _Correa_, as one of the ports of the Kingdom of Cananor.]

[2] Mr. Burnell thinks _Kachchil_pattanam must be an error (easy in Malayalim) for _Kavvil_pattanam, i.e. Kavvayi (Kanwai in our map).

[3] As _printed_ by Rowlandson, the name is corrupt (like many others in the book), being given as _Hubaee Murawee_. But suspecting what this pointed to, I examined the MS. in the R.A. Society's Library. The knowledge of the Arabic _character_ was quite sufficient to enable me to trace the name as [Arabic], _Hili Marawi_. (See _Rowlandson_, pp.

54, 58-59, and MS. pp. 23 and 26, also _Indian Antiquary_, III. p.

213.)

CHAPTER XXV.

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF MELIBAR.