28 MADRAS FISHERIES BULLETIN [VOL. XVI, 



protection to their subjects and allies, the Paravas, appear to have 

 been most radical and effective, consisting in the removal of 

 all Christian natives from the Madura coast to Mannar and to the 

 string of islands skirting the coast from Tuticorin to Pamban with 

 a concurrent blockade of the Nayak's seaboard. Nor was the 

 blockade a peaceful one as we learn from Van Reede and Laurens 

 Pyl's Memoir of 1669 quoted above. To use their words " the 

 Portuguese with their boats pillaged the entire sea-coast, which they 

 disquieted so effectually that the renters and overseers (of the 

 Nayak) on account of the great loss they suffered in their revenues 

 were obliged to request the Nayak to call the Portuguese back 

 again. " 



During this period of disturbance the Paravas held pearl 

 fisheries from the small islands along the Madura coast and 

 " assisted to the best of their power the Portuguese vessels. " * 



I refer to this period of the temporary settlement of the Paravas 

 in the Madura Islands, the unmistakable evidence of a fishery camp 

 to be seen to-day among the sand-dunes of Nallatanni tivu, an 

 island lying off the coast between Kilakarai and Tuticorin. If we 

 fix the date of this fishery between 1 560 to 1570 we cannot be far 

 out, for it was in 1560 that the Viceroy Don Constantine de 

 Braganza erected the fort of Mannar and transferred thereto the 

 inhabitants of the Parava town of Pinnakayal, the scene of Francis 

 Xavier's labours twenty years previously, and one of their chief 

 and most prosperous settlements.! 



By this change the island of Mannar become rich and prosper- 

 ous as long as the fisheries continued to give handsome returns. 

 De Sa e Menezes (/or. cit.) writing in 1622 states that for many years 

 the fisheries had become extinct " because of the great poverty into 

 "which the Paravas had fallen, for they made no profit for want 

 of accommodation and of boats " — a result likely to arise from the 



* Van Reede and Pyl, loc. cit. 



t De Sa e Menezes describes Pinnakayal (Puticale as he spells the name) at 

 the time of this transference as " a place on the Fishery Coast, inhabited by Para was, 

 who, tired of the continual attacks of the Bodaguas, their neighbours, lived more 

 the life of fronteros than of fishermen, which trade they p'ied for subsistence, but 

 were continually robbed and cut off by their neighbours "—The Rebellion of Ceylon, 

 translated from the Spanish by Lieutenant-Colonel H.H. St. George). These Bodaguas 

 (properly Vadugas) were the Nayakkan's Telugu taxgatherers, so called in the Tamil 

 country because, being Telugus, they came from the north. They belonged to the 

 ame caste as the Nayakkan himself. A Jesuit writer of that time, quoted by Caldwell 

 (he. cit. p-69), descubed them as "the collectors of the royal taxes, a race of over- 

 scaring and insolent men." 



