16 MADRAS FISHERIES BULLETIN [VOL. XVI, 



" Portuguese, but at that time they had no means of preventing it, 

 "as the Dutch Company was increasing in strength and was 

 "taking possession of their towns, forts and ships, and became 

 " daily more powerful, which caused them to bear much from the 

 " Naick with forbearance. 



" Matters stood thus in the lands of the Naick of Madura* till 1658, 

 " when the town of Tutucoryn was taken by force of arms from the 

 " Portuguese and Parruas, by which success the Company succeeded 

 " to their rights over the coast, as well as to their authority over the 

 "sea-ports, the Christians, the pearl fisheries, and all thereunto 

 "appertaining; in fact to all that the Parruas first had, and the 

 " priests and Portuguese afterwards possessed." 



(b) The Pearl Banks under Portuguese Control, 



1524— 1658. 



Of the prosperity and conduct of the fisheries under the Portu- 

 guese we know nothing with exactitude — even the dates of the 

 important fisheries are lost through the disappearance of the official 

 records. 



* Dravida, the country of the Tamils, was divided in the earliest days of which we 

 have record and prior to the Christian era, between three dynasties, the Pandyans, the 

 Cheras, and the Cholas, The Pandyan kingdom, deriving its name from that of the 

 founder of the first dynasty, comprised under normal conditions little more than the present 

 districts of Madura and Tinnevelly, the city of Madura being the capital during the greater 

 part of the continuance of the kingdom, which suffered the usual vicissitudes of Indian 

 states, sometimes preponderating and more frequently in later times, tributary to a neigh- 

 bouring state, but always maintaining in Madura some semblance of sovereign authority. 



After the fall of the powerful Hoysala Ballala Rajas, at the beginning of the 

 fourteenth century (A.D. 1310^, a great Hindu state, that of Vijayanagar, took shape in 

 the centre of the Deccan. The sovereign of this state became about the middle of the 

 fourteenth century the overlord of the states of Southern India including the Pandyan 

 country, and the Princes of Madura remained tributary till about the lime of the arrival 

 of the Portuguese in the Gulf of Mannar. 



The reigning dynasty at that time was tl at of the Nayakkans, and while the 

 Portuguese were busy making settlements on the coast, the Nayakkan was making himself 

 master of all the lower countries from Cape Comorin to Tanjore, " expelling and rooting 

 out all the princes and land proprietors" who were living and reigning there. The 

 Nayakkans did not consolidate their power in the extreme south till after St. F. Xavier's 

 arrival in India in 1542. 



The battle ofTalikota in 1565, in which the Kin'4 of Vijayanagar fell before a 

 great combination of Muhammadan states, gave the Nayakkan complete independence, 

 which his family retained till 1736 when the last of this house fell before the power of 

 the Nawab of the Carnatic, the ally of the British. 



It is noteworthy that the Nayakkan rulers of Madura never actually assumed a regal 

 title, contenting themselves with their original one (Nayakka) meaning Lieutenant or 

 Vicerov, even afier the suzerain power of Vijayanagar was broken by the Muhammadans, 

 and when, as in 163S there wis actual war between the reduced Raya of Vijayanagar 

 (then of Chan lragiri) and the Nayakkan of Madura. 



