Kaveripattinam
- Kharavela and the Mahameghavahanas
- Early historic centuries
Kaveripattinam was a great port where the Kaveri river meets the sea. Diggers found a brick and timber wharf where boats were tied up.
Kaveripattinam was a great port where the Kaveri river meets the sea, in Tamil Nadu. Old texts also call it Kaveripumpattinam, or Puhar. [Dayalan, 2019, p.10]
Diggers found a huge brick and wood platform there. Archaeologists think it may have been a dock, where boats could tie up. Wood from the site dates to about 250 BCE. That makes this a very old port. [Dayalan, 2019, p.11]
The same rouletted ware, a fine stamped pottery, found here also turns up at Kalinga’s ports. Historians think an old land road linked this southern port to Kalinga too. A sea trade web likely joined them as well. [Patnaik, 2014a, p.103; Patra, n.d., p.110]
No source tells of a straight sea trip between the two coasts. So historians call this link probable, not proven. [Dayalan, 2019, p.10]
For scholars
As with Arikamedu, this port’s tie to Kalinga rests on shared pots and an old land road, not a known voyage. The dig report behind the dock has not been checked directly. [Dayalan, 2019, p.11]
Facts
- Coordinates
- 10.77°, 79.85°
Sources: [Dayalan, 2019]
- Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019
- Modern name
- Poompuhar, Mayiladuthurai district, Tamil Nadu
- Also known as
- Kaveripumpattinam, Puhar
- Region
- south-india
Scholar notes
As with Arikamedu, the tie to Kalinga is a shared pottery horizon and a shared overland trade circuit, not a documented voyage between the two coasts. Kaveripattinam is also called Kaveripumpattinam and Puhar; the modern village is Poompuhar. The excavation reports behind Dayalan's wharf description were not read.
- Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019 , offprint pp. 10-12, section 'Kaveripumpattinam' ('Kaveripumpattinam (10 deg 46' N; 79 deg 51' E) in the district of Tanjavur, Tamil Nadu.' At Kilaiyur a massive brick platform, read as a wharf where boats could be moored to wooden posts, was excavated; radiocarbon dates on the associated wood average about 250 BCE. Journal pagination not verified.)
- Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , p. 110 (Rouletted ware from Sisupalagarh, Manikpatna and Radhanagara in Orissa is listed with the same ware from Kaveripatnam, Uraiyur and Arikamedu, which the authors read as evidence of a shared Roman-period trade network along the east coast.)
- Sunil Kumar Patnaik. *Puri: A Study of Early Trade and Pilgrim Routes*. in Odisha Review. 2014a , pp. 103, 108 (p. 103: in the early historical period 'the land routes extended from Taxila to Kaveripattinam in the south and Tamluk in the east up to Broach in the west', with Tosali, Kalingapatnam, Tamralipti and Pithunda among the Kalinga centres in the same trade circuit.)