The identification of Kaṭāha

Note: this text is extracted from Book II, chapter 13:

“When they reached Tāmraliptā they were married, and the minds of the young couple were firmly knit together by the bond of mutual love. Then Guhasena’s father died, and he himself was urged by his relations to go to the country of Kaṭāha for the purpose of trafficking; but his wife Devasmitā was too jealous to approve of that expedition, fearing exceedingly that he would be attracted by some other lady...”.

Tawney suggested that Kaṭāha might possibly be identified with Cathay, the mediæval name of China. His surmise, however, has been proved incorrect. It has now been traced to Kedah, one of the unfederated Malay States, which was apparently known in Southern India as Kaḍāram, or Kaṭāha. The data for arriving at this conclusion is interesting.

The Chōla monarch, Rājēndra Chōla I (a.d. 1012-1052), dispatched several expeditions over the water to the East probably in defence of Tamil or Telugu settlements on the east coast of Sumatra and on the west coast of southernmost Burma, the isthmus of Kra, and Malaya. Among the inscriptions recording such events is one which tells of an expedition to Kaḍāram via Ma-Nakkavāram— i.e. the Nicobar Islands. For full details of the evidence derived from this inscription reference should be made to Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, vol. iii, Part. II, Arch. Surv. Ind., New Imp. Series, vol. xxix, 1903, pp. 194-195; Hultzsch, Epigraphia Indica, vol. ix, No. 31, 1907-1908, p. 231; and especially pp. 19-22 of Cædès’ “Le Royaume de £rīvijaya” in Bull, de VÊcole Franqaise d’extreme Orient, Tome XVIII, 1918. R. Sewell, in a letter to me on the subject, would trace the phonetic changes of Kedah as follows:—

Granted that Kedah was so spelt in ancient times, and that it came to be called Kaḍāram in South India, we can delete the “m” as a South Indian dialect suffix {e.g. pattana becomes pattanam, maṇḍala is maṇḍalam, etc.). Then the transformation is natural enough:

ke	da	h
ka	tā	ha
{   ka} {or ki}	dā	ra	m

Sewell considers that the phonetic change from ha to ra is not too forced. It should be noted that the Southern Hindus knew of a Kaḍāram in their own country, and it is natural for people, hearing of a foreign place with a name like that of one of their own towns, to call the foreign place after their own.

There is, however, a little further evidence of considerable interest. In the Kanyākumari (Cape Cormorin) inscription of Virarajendra, verse 72 reads: “

With (the help of) his forces, which crossed the seas, which were excessively powerful in arms and which had scattered away the armies of all his enemies, he burnt Kaṭāha, that could not be set on fire by others. What is (there that is) impossible for this Rājēndra-Chōla!”

This burning of Kaṭāha is considered by K. V. S. Aiyar to refer to the conquest of Burma. See Travancore Archæological Seiies, vol. iii, Part I, 1922 , pp. 120 , 159, from which the above translation has been taken. —n.m.p.