Indian Antiquary Vol 59

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 238

216
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
- [NOVEMBER, 1930
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IV. Ponnani taluk: an intensely fertile tract with a density of over 1000. Palghat in the hinterland is the gate to the Tamil country and dominated by Tamil Brahmans. Ethno. graphically, Palghat contains strong Tamil elements, e.g., Taragars and Kaikolars. But the immigrants have all, to some extent, assimilated Malayali culture. Ponnani is an area of transition, and owes its importance, in part at least, to the peculiar configuration of the Cochin State. The northern portion of Cochin supports a population of over 500 per square mile, and, with South Walluvanad, forms an avenue of approach to the port of Cochin and its backwater, which might be one of the finest harbours in the world, but for the difficulties created by its bar and the south-west monsoon. Cochin backwater is the strongest "magnetic" centre on the West Coast south of Bombay, a centripetal focus par excellence. It has attracted Romans, Jews and Syrian Christians, Portuguese, Dutch and British. The Shoranûr-Ernakulam Railway is but one of many evidences of the deflection of movementcultural, racial and economic-to the objective of Cochin backwater. The railway takes a short cut through broken country; the real route lay through Ponnani tâluk, and there is evidence of this deflection in the social ingredients of Ponnani taluk itself.
E. To the Nelliampathi Hills (see Fig. 7, P. III) Cochin undoubtedly owes its survival as a sovereign state. For generations Cochin groaned beneath the upper and nether millstones, the Zamorin and Travancore. But thanks to the Nelliampathis, Cochin can only be attacked from the north on a narrow front, and Trivandrum is too far distant to control it effectively.
V. In North and Central Travancore, the culture of Kerala has full play. A strip of maximum density (over 1000 per square mile) runs almost without break along the seaboard from end to end. The Ghâts form an impenetrable shield except for the loophole of the Shencottah Pass, and even here Tamil influence has not penetrated far, for Travancore holds territory to the eastward of the pass and density is relatively low.
F. Nedumangad, with a population of only 300 to the square mile, marks the end of undiluted Malabar. Trivandrum is the southern limit of the "maximum density" seaboard. Nearly one-fifth of its people speak Tamil.
VI. Thence southward lies an area of transition, and at Cape Comorin the transition is complete. We know from inscriptions that the southernmost taluks of Travancore were for centuries dominated politically and culturally by Tamil Pandyas. The Census figures (1901) are significant.
2. The Agency is, thanks to malaria, one vast area of isolation. Geographically it is an annexe to the great mountain belt that separates the Indo-Gangetio plains from Peninsular India. In the transmission of cultural influence it is a barrier which cannot be crossed. True, there are racial and cultural movements within it, and parts of it are loosely controlled by an immigrant aristocracy, but these can only be explained by a comprehensive study of the whole Vindhya belt, and such a study has yet to be made. Only in two tâluks, Jeypore and the Northern Udayagiri, does density rise beyond 150 per square mile. For my present purpose the Agency may be regarded as a blank wall.
3. The East Coast, Northern Division (the Northern Circars) is a narrow coastal plain, not unlike the West Coast. On the north its extension in the coastal plain of Oriesa gives access to Bengal. The Oriyas have penetrated into Ganjam, but the passage is constricted by the Chilka Lake. In the centre two large magnetic foci are created (Fig. 8, PI. III) by the deltas of the Godavari and Kistna, between which lies the Colair Lake. The Kistna delta is accessible from the Deccan, as the histories of Badami, Warangal and Golkonda and the railway from Warangal to Bezwada and from Guntakkal to Guntûr testify. The Colair Lake has,
From north to south the percentage of Tamil speakers in the southern tAluks is as follows: Th. yandrum 19, Neyyattinkara 15, Vilavankod 71, Kalkulam 83, Eraniel 92, Agastisvaram 97, Tovala 99.