சோழமண்டலம் Coromandel Coast ஆனது எப்படி?

பிஷப் கால்ட்வெல் போன்றோர் Coromandel என்பது கருமணல் என்பதன் திரிபு என்றதை மறுத்து பல ஐரோப்பிய மொழிகளின் சான்றாதாரங்கள் கொண்டு அதன் மூலச் சொல் சோழமண்டலம் என்று ஹாப்சன் - ஜாப்சன் அகராதி நிறுவியது. அதன் இரண்டாம் பதிப்பு (1903) வாக்கியங்களை இங்கே பார்ப்போம். இரண்டாம் பதிப்பில் கால்ட்வெல் தம் கருத்தை மாற்றிக்கொண்டு விட்டார்.

இத்தாலியில் தொடங்கிய மறுமலர்ச்சி ஊழியில் ஐரோப்பிய சித்திரங்கள் மகத்தான வளர்ச்சி அடைந்தன. அவற்றை இந்தியாவுக்கு, அப்போதைய தலைநகர் கொல்கத்தாவில் இறக்குமதி செய்து நவசித்திரங்கள் வங்காளியர் உருவாக்கினர். அதன் நீட்சியாய் கடற்கரையில் காந்தி சிலை போன்றன வடித்த D. P. ராய் சௌதுரி போன்றோர் சென்னையில் புதுநுட்பங்களைச் சைத்ரிகர்களுக்குப் பயிற்றினார். 1950-களில் கே. சி. எஸ். பணிக்கர் ஈஞ்சம்பாக்கத்தில் ’கோரமாண்டல் கோஸ்ட்’ என்னும் பதத்தின் உந்துதலால் ‘சோழமண்டலம்’ என்னும் கலைக்கிராமத்தை நிர்மாணித்தார்.

நா. கணேசன்

COROMANDEL , n.p. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India from Pt. Calimere northward to the mouth of the Kistna, sometimes to Orissa. It corresponds pretty nearly to the Maabar of Marco Polo and the Mahommedan writers of his age, though that is defined more accurately as from C. Comorin to Nellore.

Much that is fanciful has been written on the origin of this name. Tod makes it Kūrū-mandala, the Realm of the Kūrūs (Trans. R. As. Soc. iii. 157). Bp. Caldwell, in the first edition of his Dravidian Grammar, suggested that European traders might have taken this familiar name from that of Karumaṇal ('black sand'), the name of a small village on the coast north of Madras, which is habitually pronounced and written Coromandel by European residents at Madras. [The same suggestion was made earlier (see Wilks, Hist. Sketches, ed. 1869, i. 5,

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note)]. The learned author, in his second edition, has given up this suggestion, and has accepted that to which we adhere. But Mr. C. P. Brown, the eminent Telugu scholar, in repeating the former suggestion, ventures positively to assert: "The earliest Portuguese sailors pronounced this Coromandel, and called the whole coast by this name, which was unknown to the Hindus";* a passage containing in three lines several errors. Again, a writer in the Ind. Antiquary (i. 380) speaks of this supposed origin of the name as "pretty generally accepted," and proceeds to give an imaginative explanation of how it was propagated. These etymologies are founded on a corrupted form of the name, and the same remark would apply to Kharamaṇḍalam, the 'hot country,' which Bp. Caldwell mentions as one of the names given, in Telugu, to the eastern coast. Padre Paolino gives the name more accurately as Ciola (i.e. Chola) maṇḍalam, but his explanation of it as meaning the Country of Cholam (or ~uwārī -- Sorghum vulgare, Pers.) is erroneous. An absurd etymology is given by Teixeira (Relacion de Harmuz, 28; 1610). He writes: "Choromãdel or Choro Bãdel, i.e. Rice Port, because of the great export of rice from thence." He apparently compounds H. chaul, chāwal, 'cooked rice' (!) and bandel, i.e. bandar (q.v.) 'harbour.' This is a very good type of the way etymologies are made by some people, and then confidently repeated.

The name is in fact Chôṛamaṇḍala, the Realm of Chôṛa; this being the Tamil form of the very ancient title of the Tamil Kings who reigned at Tanjore. This correct explanation of the name was already given by D'Anville (see Éclaircissemens, p. 117), and by W. Hamilton in 1820 (ii. 405), by Ritter, quoting him in 1836 (Erdkunde, vi. 296); by the late M. Reinaud in 1845 (Relation, &c., i. lxxxvi.); and by Sir Walter Elliot in 1869 (J. Ethnol. Soc. N.S. i. 117). And the name occurs in the forms Cholamaṇḍalam or Solamaṇḍalam on the great Temple inscription of Tanjore (11th century), and in an inscription of A.D. 1101 at a temple dedi<->

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* J.R.A.S., N.S. v. 148. He had said the same in earlier writings, and was apparently the original author of this suggestion. [But see above.]

cated to Varāhasvāmi near the Seven Pagodas. We have other quite analogous names in early inscriptions, e.g. Ilamaṇḍalam (Ceylon), Cheramaṇḍalam, Tondaimaṇḍalam, &c.

Chola, as the name of a Tamil people and of their royal dynasty appears as Choḍa in one of Asoka's inscriptions, and in the Telugu inscriptions of the Chālukya dynasty. Nor can we doubt that the same name is represented by Σωρα of Ptolemy who reigned at 'Aρκατου (Arcot), Σωρ-γαξ who reigned at "Ορθουρα (Wariūr), and the Σωραι γομαδϵς who dwelt inland from the site of Madras.*

The word Soli, as applied to the Tanjore country, occurs in Marco Polo (Bk. iii. ch. 20), showing that Chola in some form was used in his day. Indeed Soli is used in Ceylon.† And although the Choromandel of Baldaeus and other Dutch writers is, as pronounced in their language, ambiguous or erroneous, Valentijn (1726) calls the country Sjola, and defines it as extending from Negapatam to Orissa, saying that it derived its name from a certain kingdom, and adding that mandalam is 'kingdom.'‡ So that this respectable writer had already distinctly indicated the true etymology of Coromandel.

Some old documents in Valentijn speak of the 'old city of Coromandel.' It is not absolutely clear what place was so called (probably by the Arabs in their fashion of calling a chief town by the name of the country), but the indications point almost certainly to Negapatam. §

The oldest European mention of the name is, we believe, in the Roteiro de Vasco da Gama, where it appears as Chomandarla. The short Italian narrative of Hieronymo da Sto. Stefano is, however, perhaps earlier still, and he curiously enough gives the name in exactly the modern form "Coromandel," though perhaps his C

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* See Bp. Caldwell's Comp. Gram., 18, 95, &c.

† See Tennent, i. 395.

‡ "This coast bears commonly the corrupted name of Choromandel, and is now called only thus; but the right name is Sjola-mandalam, after Sjola, a certain kingdom of that name, and mandalam, 'a kingdom,' one that used in the old times to be an independent and mighty empire." -- Val. v. 2.

§ e.g. 1675. -- "Hence the country . . . has become very rich, wherefore the Portuguese were induced to build a town on the site of the old Gentoo (Jentiefze) city Chiormandelan." -- Report on the Dutch Conquests in Ceylon and S. India, by Rykloof Van Goens in Valentijn, v. (Ceylon) 234.


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had originally a cedilla (Ramusio, i. f. 345v.). These instances suffice to show that the name was not given by the Portuguese. Da Gama and his companions knew the east coast only by hearsay, and no doubt derived their information chiefly from Mahommedan traders, through their "Moorish" interpreter. That the name was in familiar Mahommedan use at a later date may be seen from Rowlandson's Translation of the Tohfat-ul-Mujāhidīn, where we find it stated that the Franks had built fortresses "at Meelapoor (i.e. Mailapur or San Tomé) and Nagapatam, and other ports of Solmundul," showing that the name was used by them just as we use it (p. 153). Again (p. 154) this writer says that the Mahommedans of Malabar were cut off from extra-Indian trade, and limited "to the ports of Guzerat, the Concan, Solmondul, and the countries about Kaeel." At page 160 of the same work we have mention of "Coromandel and other parts," but we do not know how this is written in the original Arabic. Varthema (1510) has Ciormandel, i.e. Chormandel, but which Eden in his translation (1577, which probably affords the earliest English occurrence of the name) deforms into Cyromandel (f. 396b). [Albuquerque in his Cartas (see p. 135 for a letter of 1513) has Choromandell passim.] Barbosa has in the Portuguese edition of the Lisbon Academy, Charamandel; in the Span. MS. translated by Lord Stanley of Alderley, Cholmendel and Cholmender. D'Alboquerque's Commentaries (1557), Mendez Pinto (c. 1550) and Barros (1553) have Choromandel, and Garcia De Orta (1563) Charamandel. The ambiguity of the ch, soft in Portuguese and Spanish, but hard in Italian, seems to have led early to the corrupt form Coromandel, which we find in Parkes's Mendoza (1589), and Coromandyll, among other spellings, in the English version of Castanheda (1582). Cesare Federici has in the Italian (1587) Chiaramandel (probably pronounced soft in the Venetian manner), and the translation of 1599 has Coromandel. This form thenceforward generally prevails in English books, but not without exceptions. A Madras document of 1672 in Wheeler has Cormandell, and so have the early Bengal records in the India Office; Dampier (1689) has Coromondel (i. 509); Lockyer (1711) has "the Coast of Cormandel"; A. Hamilton (1727) Chormondel (i. 349); ed. 1744, i. 351; and a paper of about 1759, published by Dalrymple, has "Choromandel Coast" (Orient. Repert. i. 120-121). The poet Thomson has Cormandel:

"all that from the tract
Of woody mountains stretch'd through gorgeous Ind
Fall on Cormandel's Coast or Maiabar."
Summer.


The Portuguese appear to have adhered in the main to the correcter form Choromandel: e.g. Archivio Port. Oriental, fasc. 3, p. 480, and passim. A Protestant Missionary Catechism, printed at Tranquebar in 1713 for the use of Portuguese schools in India has: "na costa dos Malabaros que se chama Cormandel." Bernier has "la côte de Koromandel" (Amst. ed. ii. 322). W. Hamilton says it is written Choramandel in the Madras Records until 1779, which is substantially correct. In the MS. "List of Persons in the Service of the Rt. Honble. E. I. Company in Fort St. George and other places on the Coast of Choromandell," preserved in the Indian Office, that spelling continues down to 1778. In that year it is changed to Coromandel. In the French translation of Ibn Batuta (iv. 142) we find Coromandel, but this is only the perverse and misleading manner of Frenchmen, who make Julius Caesar cross from "France" to "England." The word is Ma'bar in the original. [Alboquerque (Comm. Hak. Soc. i. 41) speaks of a violent squall under the name of vara de Coromandel. ]

From [1]
From:
Henry Yule, A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-
Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical,
geographical and discursive. London: Murray, 1903. 1021 pp. New edn by
William Crooke