In search of Muziris

Extract

The importance of Muziris in Roman trade with India does not need any underlining. The port on the Malabar coast of modern Kerala figures prominently in the descriptions of classical geographers, it receives mention in the earliest Tamil poems, and it has come into the news more recently through the publication of a Greek papyrus from Egypt. It is also clear from the amount of Roman silver and gold coin found in S India — which gives some substance to Roman estimates of money haemorrhaging out to India — and from the value of the eastern cargoes recorded coming into Egypt and Rome that the trade was neither casual nor modest. All this is well known and has been carefully studied. The oddity, or pity, is that, despite the many ports listed in ancient authors along some 600 km of the Malabar coast, not a single one has been identified for certain, and not one has produced any serious archaeological evidence of Roman contact. As for Muziris, the most important of them all, we have only a vague idea of where it was located.

Almost every earlier study has placed Muziris at Kodungallur (Cranganore/Cranganur in its Europeanised form) at the mouth of the Periyar river and north of Kerala's main modern port of Kochi (Cochin) (fig. 1). That is reasonable enough. The Periyar is the greatest river in Kerala and runs down from the towering western ghats to the sea. But where exactly on the Periyar? Kodungallur is the name given to a large zone, incorporating a number of small towns of which Kodungallur itself is one, strung out along the road that runs north for several kilometres from the Periyar parallel to the coast and the inland waters of the river Pullut. But how certain is this, anyway? These were the questions we had in mind when a group of us decided to take a closer look at the evidence, both in the literature and on the ground. Ultimately, only an excavation can answer the questions for certain, but perhaps we could narrow down the options.