1922] MADRAS PEARL FISHERIES 9 



Kolkhoi : the headquarters of the Indian Pearl fishery still remained 

 located at the mouth of the Tambraparni, * but its name was 

 altered to Chayl, Gail, or Kayl, wherein we recognize the Kayal of 

 to-day. 



Marco Polo in the thirteenth century speaks of Cail as a 

 great and noble city ; Ludovico de Vathema mentions that he 

 saw pearls fished for in the sea near the town of Chayl 

 about A.D. 1500, while Barbosa, who travelled about the same 

 time, says that the people of Chayl are jewellers who trade in 

 pearls. 



To-day Kayal is a village some two miles inland and situated 

 two and a half miles northward of Pinnakayal, a Parava town 

 on an island in the present embouchure of the Tambraparni. 

 The old name stili clings, in the form Palayakayal, i.e. Old 

 Kayal, and mounds of rubbish littered with fragments of porce- 

 lain bespeaking the site of what must have been the great buildings 

 of a noble city are within gunshot. 



Kanakasabhai in his Tamils of 1800 years ago t states that 

 Kayal and Korkai were separate cities, saying, 'The site 

 of this town (Korkai) which stood on the sea coast is now about 

 fi\e miles inland. After the sea had retired from Korkai, anew 

 emporium arose on the coast. This was Kayal . . . which 

 in turn became in time too far from the sea and Kayal was also 

 abandoned." 



We have ample evidence that the abandonment of Kayal and 

 the creation of the new ports and daughter towns of Kayalpattanam 



* This name Tambraparni in its Romano-Greek form of Taprobane was also the ac- 

 cepted cognomen of the island of Ceylon among the Romans of the empire. Variations 

 in the manner of spelling are many — Tamrapurni, Tambraparni, Tambrapanni, Tamra- 

 pa ini and others. 



Much ingenuity has been displayed and wasted in seeking plausible derivations. 

 All those quoted in Tennent's '* Ceylon " seem to be purely fanciful ; I do not think we 

 need go beyond the terms 7'ambiraw, copper, and Vartiam, or Par/iaw, colour, words 

 in common use among Tamils, in seeking for the meaning of the name. 



No feature strikes the stranger on arrival in Colombo more forcibly than the copper- 

 red hue of the roads and soil ; " Copper-coloured Isle " is a most appropriate descriptive 

 term to apply to Ceylon and equally so is the " Copper-coloured water '* to the Tinne- 

 vellv river in question, when in flood it becomes turbid with the red mud it carries 

 seawards. 



f Madras, 1904. 



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