1922] Madras pearl fisheries ii 



When the Pandyan kingdom was powerful the Paravas had 

 grants of certain rights from the monarchy, paying tribute from the 

 produce of the fisheries and receiving protection and immunity 

 from taxation in return. The fishery in these early clays appears to 

 have been extremely prosperous — thus in A.D. 1330 Friar Jordanus, 

 who visited India at this time, tells us that as many as 8,000 boats 

 were employed in the pearl fisheries of Tinnevelly and Ceylon.* 



The efficient organization of the fishery was always a matter 

 of great concern to the controlling power; for example we learn 

 from the following extract written by the Nawab of the Carnatic 

 in 1771 to the Governor-General of Batavia, that 



"In the time of the King of Madura, Terniel Nadu Raja t and 



' the second king Minaitje Ringeja Dalway, in the year 1470 it was 



" decided that in January all things connected with the fishery 



" should be arranged and that the same arrangement should hold 



" good so long as the kingdom remained under the Carnatic. i" 



The conditions under which the Paravas lived and Ihe far- 

 reaching changes which in the middle of the 16th century were 



* Thurston, E. " Pearl and Chank Fisheries'' ; Madras, 1894, page 9. 



f This name evidently connotes that of Tirumalai Nayakkan, the greatest of the 

 Madura Nayakkan dynasty. He reigned from 1623 to 1659. The date given for the 

 transaction chronicled in this statement, 1470, is therefore obviously an error as no other 

 Nayakkan ruler of similar name is known. The honorific Nadu given in the text, is a 

 corruption of the Telugu Nayudu, an alternative of Nayakka. If therefore this regulation 

 of the Pearl Fishery by the Madura ruler did take place, it was the work of the powerful 

 and enlightened Tirumalai Nayakka (or Nayudu) aided apparently by his revenue 

 minister, one of the Dalavay Mudali family ; the date must therefore have been between 

 1623 aid 1659. The probabilities are all in favour of this ; the names are in agreement, 

 while the coincidence of a powerful and ambitious ruler in Madura and the decadence of 

 Portuguese power renders the interference of the former to recover the traditional authority 

 of Madura over the PearljFishery extremely probable. It is exactly what we should expect. 



The person named as the second King was probably the Devvan or administrative 

 adviser to the Nayakkan. Or he may have been only the farmer of the revenues, and as 

 such directly concerned with obtaining a larger share of revenue from the Pearl Fishery. 

 Dalavay was the hereditary honorific of a great family belonging to the Mudali or 

 Mudaliyar division of the powerful Vellala caste ; members of this family farmed the 

 revenues of Tinnevelly and Madura under the Pandyans and the Nayakkans ; even under 

 the Nawab of the Carnatic they maintained this position : they were men of vast import- 

 ance. Their division of the Vellala caste occupied generally towards the rulers of the 

 extreme south of India, both great and small, the same important role as administrative 

 advisers that the Brahmans did elsewhere. 



+ Originally the term Carnatic meant the country inhabited by Kanarese-speaking 

 people, the southern part of the great tableland between the Eastern and Western 

 ghauts. Later, when the Nawab of the Carnatic, who succeeded to much of the power 

 previously wielded by the great Hindu state of Vijayanagar, extended his territory to 

 the Coromandel coast and the western shore of the Gulf of Mannar, this term " Carnatic" 

 came to have a secondary and corrupt significance among English people, being 

 limited to the lowlands between the Eastern ghauts and the sea. 



