Historian and former chief of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) M.G.S. Narayanan says that the Kerala government has been misled by the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR ) into believing that the archaeological site of Pattanam, a few miles away from Kodungalloor, was the location of the famous ancient harbour of Muziris.
“It’s unfortunate that they have now sought to drag the President into the controversy around the so-called Muziris project by including a visit to Pattanam in his itinerary,” he rues.
“The location of Muciri, called Muziris by Greek and Roman geographers, had already been clearly recorded by poets of the Sangam Age who mentioned Yavana (Roman) ships coming to Muciri at the mouth of the river Periyar, and going back laden with pepper after paying in gold.
It is well-known that they were referring to Kodungalloor, the harbour town controlled by the Ceraman chiefs of Tamizhakam who had their headquarters in the interior, at Karur near Trichy.
These Ceramans could easily reach the West Coast through the nearby Palghat gap, and then follow the course of the river to its end for taking advantage of the Roman trade. Muciri and Karur are both mentioned in Sangam literature,” the historian says.
From information provided by classical Greek and Roman writers Pliny, Ptolemy and the Periplus of the Erithrean Sea, the Greek and Roman navigators who came with the monsoon first cited Ezhi Mala and going southward reached Muziris, the first Emporium of India which, according to their calculation, lay 500 stadia to the South of Ezhi Mala.
Modern scholars have found this to be the location of Kodungalloor, which became the capital of the later Ceraman Perumals who renamed it as Makotai or Mahodayapura.
It is clear by now that Pattanam which has yielded pieces of Roman amphorae, important potsherds and one or two old Cera punch-marked coins, and was at best a good archaeological site producing semi-precious carnelian and other beads in plenty, and presumably a small brick platform and a small piece of a wooden boat, cannot by any stretch of imagination be called Muziris says Mr. Narayanan.
