their possession of Porakad where ended a route through the pass of Achenkoil and forming the chief highway for goods brought across South India to the west coast, and we may conclude from Pliny that Greeks visiting only Nelcynda for pepper were told by the Pandyas that Muziris was not rich in merchandise. In Cochin too, or Malabar, a colony of Jews seems to have settled during the first century; they, possibly, sent out the Jewish families which migrated later to the districts between Lü Shan and Tcheng-tu in China. Kottayam has one of the oldest Syrian Christian churches in India. When the Periplus was written, Greek merchants were not visiting Carura, the residence of Chera kings, also called Vanji and to-day represented by Parur or Paravur, but leaving Egypt about July were content to deal simply with Muziris and Nelcynda, the trade of both places being of the same class.2 The Pandya Kingdom occupied generally the districts of Tinnevelly and Madura with part of Travancore, but in the time of the Periplus it extended beyond the Ghats so as to include more of Travancore. Just as the Chera Kingdom was famous for its pepper, so the Pandya Kingdom was famous for its pearls, obtained chiefly in the Gulf of Manaar from fisheries sheltered from the dangerous cyclones of the Bay of Bengal and worked by condemned criminals from Colchol (Korkai, now Kolkai at the mouth of the sacred river Tamraparni). They were subject to control from the inland capital Modura, which was not yet visited frequently by the Greek merchants. It is probable that the author of the Periplus did not go farther south than Nelcynda or perhaps the Red Bluffs, for his information becomes more scanty, even very inaccurate and his statements are founded on hearsay reports of other merchants. He mentions besides the Pyrrhos mountain (the Red Bluffs), Balita, Cape Comorin the southern extremity of the Indian peninsula (Comari), and Colchoi, but we miss the personal note which is a characteristic of the former parts of his narrative; yet it cannot have been long before Roman subjects resided in the Pandya Kingdom just as they did in the Chera region. Powerful Yavana and dumb Mlecchas (that is, barbarians) in complete armour formed bodyguards to Tamil rulers, and it has been definitely stated, on the authority of Tamil poems once more, that "Roman" soldiers enlisted in the service of Pandya and other kings; for instance, in the reign of Pandya Aryappadai-Kadantha-Nedunj-Cheliyan the gates of the fort Madura (a great city with streets appropriated to special trades) were guarded by Roman soldiers with drawn swords; another poem, in which is described a Tamil king's tent on the battle-field, speaks of it as guarded by powerful and ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2Periplus, 56-57. |