Sailing Around Erythraean Sea: Sixty: Balitha or Vizhinham

The previous Section was little confusing owing to transliteration of the document and the use of English term, Coast Country instead of Koine Greek term. Direction of the voyage from Comarin must have been North instead of South. Let us examine the new Section:


Among the market-towns of these countries, and the harbours where the ships put in from Damirica and from the north, the most important are, in order as they lie, first Camara, then Poduca, then Sopatma, in which there are ships of the country coasting along the shore as far as Damirica; and other very large vessels made of single logs bound together, called Sangara: but those which make the voyage to Chrys and to the Ganges are called colandia, and are very large. There are imported into these places everything made in Damirica, and the greatest part of what is brought at any time from Egypt comes here, together with most kinds of all the things that are brought from Damirica and of those that are carried through Paralia. 

My Search:- 

1. Damirica: The land of Damar trees.
 In Section Fifty Three, from White Island ( Kalpeni), it was written that, "Then come Nora and Tyndis, the first markets of Damirica". According to the unknown sailor beyond Bacare (Purakkad) is the Dark Red Mountain (Varkala Cliff), a Cenozoic sedimentary formation. Here the translation of Periplus Maris Erythraea, did not keep the Koine Greek words, but adopted equivalent English word. Oros Pyrrhopoikilon must have been the exact Koine Greek term for Dark Red Mountain, where Oros means mountain and Pyrrhopoikilon means dark red. (Sourced from Meta AI). Such errors are quite usual in transliteration. Paralia must have been a region starting from Varkala upto Comarin. Likewise the region of Damarica starts from Nora (Thikodi) and ends at Southern end of Bacare. And Balita was the first port in Paralia. 


2. Poduca:  Pondicherry or Puducherry. Roman pottery was found from Arikamedu, which is around three kilometres south of Puducherry. 

3. Balita: Vizhinjam. Koine Greek adaptation of Malayalam word Valitha (വലിത) meaning surrounded. Look at Google maps for Vizhijam. It was Balita. Vizhinjam is a land locked bay except at the southern end. In the Google Maps, we see a rectangular shaped bay with sandbars on western and southern sides and also in the middle. From this shape came the word Valitha. Balitha is its Koine Greek adaptation.

4. Sangara: Koine Greek adaptation of "changadam (ചങ്ങാടം)"

5. Colandia: A kind of ship used in ancient times.

6. Sopatma: Sompeta. Here also a transliteration error occurred by changing the order of sounds and letters. Sompeta is a town in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh. Take a look at the Google Maps: Sompeta along with Benkili, Zinkibhdra, Palasapuram in the south of it are on the brink of wetlands. North of it the wetland stretches upto the mouth of Rushikulya River. And on the south after Palasapuram is the ancient sea port Baruva, on the mouth of Mahendra Tanaya River. Food plains are formed in wetland, which in fact are risen when the sea withdraws, where periodic flooding or high water tables provide sufficient moisture. These reparian wetland may undergo costant changes as rivers and streams form new channels, when the floods scour the flood plains or deposit sediments and sand. Coastal process such as waves can form, sustain, modify or eliminate wetlands over time. The entire wetland area east of Sompeta must have been under sea, and a bay which provided safe anchorage to ships, at the period under the subject. Note that Sonpur or Sonapur is also situated on the banks of River Ganges and the River Gandaki, and the floods in these rivers facilitate the wetland formation. The whole area must have been known by the name Sompeta and the villages we now see on Google Maps must have been later development.

7. Chrys: Chrys islands, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. East of Chennai we see a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal dangling like a chain from North to South: Diglipur, Mayabunder, Billiground, Rangat, Kadamtala, Lakshmanpur, Wimberley Ganj, Vijayapuram, North Sentinel Islands, Rutland Island, Cinque Island etc.

End of the Section 

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