Which one of the following was an important Pandya port, celebrated for its pearls in Sangam poems and Greek accounts?
- (a)Muchiri
- (b)Korkai
- (c)Puhar
- (d)Arikamedu
Correct — B, Korkai. Korkai lay near the mouth of the Thamirabarani on the Gulf of Mannar, in what is now Thoothukudi district, and it is the port the Sangam poems and the Greek accounts both name for its pearls. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek merchant's handbook of the first century, puts it beyond words: 'From Comari toward the south this region extends to Colchi, where the pearl-fisheries are ... and it belongs to the Pandian Kingdom.' Colchi is Korkai, Comari is Cape Comorin, and the Pandian Kingdom is the Pandyas. Tamil tradition remembers Korkai as an early Pandya seat before Madurai, and the pearl banks of the Gulf of Mannar are the reason the port existed at all. Silt has since pushed the coastline several kilometres away, so the site now lies inland.
- (a)Muchiri — Muchiri, the Muziris of the Greek texts, was a Chera port on the Malabar coast, and the Periplus places it in the kingdom of Cerobothra. Its trade was pepper and spices, not pearls.
- (c)Puhar — Puhar, also called Kaveripattinam or Poompuhar, stood at the mouth of the Kaveri and was the great Chola port; it is the setting of much of the Tamil epic tradition.
- (d)Arikamedu — Arikamedu, near Puducherry, is an excavated Indo-Roman trading settlement rich in Mediterranean amphorae and Arretine ware, but it is not a Pandya pearl port of the Sangam poems.
The Sangam age in the Tamil country is described by three crowned kings — the Cheras on the west coast, the Cholas on the Kaveri and the Pandyas in the far south — and each is known by its port as much as by its capital. Those ports plugged the peninsula into an Indian Ocean trade that ran west to the Red Sea and Egypt and east towards South-East Asia, and they are visible in two independent bodies of evidence: the Tamil poems themselves, and Greek and Roman writing such as the Periplus, Pliny and Ptolemy.
The item can be solved by matching each port to its dynasty even if the pearl detail is unfamiliar, because only one of the four is Pandya. Muziris is Chera, Puhar is Chola, Arikamedu is a trading station rather than a royal port, and Korkai is what is left. The pearl fishery of the Gulf of Mannar is the corroborating detail that fixes the answer, and it is worth remembering because it persisted into modern times — the same waters were fished for pearls under later regimes as well.
- Korkai stood near the mouth of the Thamirabarani on the Gulf of Mannar, in present-day Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu.
- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea calls it Colchi, places the pearl fisheries there, and assigns it to the Pandian Kingdom.
- Muchiri or Muziris was a Chera port; the Periplus places it in the kingdom of Cerobothra.
- Puhar, also Kaveripattinam or Poompuhar, was the Chola port at the mouth of the Kaveri.
- Arikamedu near Puducherry is an excavated Indo-Roman trading settlement with Mediterranean amphorae and Arretine ware.
- Assigning Muziris to the Pandyas; it is a Chera port.
- Treating Arikamedu as a Sangam royal port rather than as an excavated trading settlement.
- Looking for Korkai on today's coastline; silting has left the site several kilometres inland.
As a port-to-dynasty pairing, as a what-were-these-places identification, or as a question on Greek and Roman references to south Indian trade.
With reference to ancient South India, Korkai, Poompuhar and Muchiri were well known as
- (a) capital cities
- (b) ports
- (c) centres of iron-and-steel making
- (d) shrines of Jain Tirthankaras
Answer(b) ports
The same three names, two years later, in the same order of importance. UPSC asks what kind of places they were; this CDS item asks which of them belonged to the Pandyas and traded in pearls.
CDS_GK_2020_II_Q932020Pearls are harvested from
- (a) Prawn
- (b) Pila
- (c) Tuna
- (d) Oyster
Answer(d) Oyster
The commodity behind the port. The pearl oyster banks of the Gulf of Mannar are the reason a settlement grew at Korkai and the reason Greek writers bothered to record it.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Muchiri, known to Greek and Roman writers as Muziris, was a port of which one of the following dynasties?
- (a)Chola
- (b)Chera
- (c)Pandya
- (d)Satavahana
Answer(b) Chera — the Periplus places Muziris in the kingdom of Cerobothra, on the Malabar coast.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Arikamedu, excavated for its Mediterranean amphorae and Arretine ware, lies near which one of the following places?
- (a)Puducherry
- (b)Nagapattinam
- (c)Thoothukudi
- (d)Kanniyakumari
Answer(a) Puducherry — the site is the best-known evidence of Indo-Roman trading contact on the Coromandel coast.