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‘MOORS’ – ‘CHONAKAR’

The Turks and their converts to Islam in South India use the Fez. The Turks, as distinct from the ‘Chonakar’ were known in South India as ‘Thulukar’ (). The fact is that Islam had come to South India direct from the country of the Prophet in the 7^th century, while it reached the North only a century later! The earlier converts to Islam in South India were called ‘Chonakar’. The Fez was a later fashion copied from the Turks by the South Indian Muslims and made popular in Ceylon after Arabi Pasha, who was an exile here.

The bulk of the ‘Moors’ in Ceylon, as it has been amply demonstrated again and again, came from the Malabar and Coromandal coasts. This has been testified to by Marco Polo in the 13^th century and by Barbosa in his account of the Island in 1519. (Tennent, Vol. I, p. 608, p. 619). Both these agree that large numbers of ‘Moors’ from the Indian coasts resorted constantly to Ceylon. Barbosa speaks of their heads covered with handkerchiefs and of their earrings so heavy that they hang down to their shoulders. A handkerchief was necessary to cover their shaven crowns, while the earrings indicated most emphatically their South Indian origins.

The word ‘Chonakar’ is another form of the term “Yavan” (vide, Tamil-English Dictionary, Madras School Book and Literature Society). The name was used earlier by the Tamils to signify the Ionians (Greeks) who traded with them.¹

According to Wilson it is applied to Muhammedan and European invaders of India and is often used for any barbaric race. Later it was extended to refer to others who followed the Greeks from the West including the Arabs. Those who adopted the religion of the Arabs in the Tamil country came to be referred to as ‘Chonakar’, irrespective of their racial origins. ‘Chonagam’ is described in Tamil dictionaries as (a) one of the fifty-six countries, (b) one of the eighteen languages. (Tamil-English Dictionary, ibid.)

Every ‘Moor’ village along the coast from BERUWELA (PERUVELI) in the South-West coast to Peruveli in the North-East coast down to Sammanturai, carries with it a Tamil name – a pointer to the fact that the original Moor occupants had hailed from the Tamil country in South India and spoke, from the beginning, the Tamil language, whatever their present ‘nationality’ and ‘race’ might be!

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Writers such as Annandale and Humayun Kabir² have pointed out that the majority of the Muslims of South India are converts to Islam. Even the Islam of Indonesia and Malaya was taught and spread by Tamil Muslims and Lebbes from the Coromandal Coast. From the works of Winstedt and of G. D. Hall, two authorities on the history of Indonesia and of Malaya, we learn that some of the early Sultans of Malaya were Tamil Muslims! The Muslim dignitary who addressed large gatherings in Ceylon on the Prophet’s Birthday this year (1958) declared unequivocally that the language of the South Indian Muslim and the Ceylon Moor was none other than Tamil.

When the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon it was the ‘Moor’ who first organised resistance against them to safeguard the trade of the Moors along the Western sea-board. They encouraged and urged Bhuvanaike Bahu, the Tamil King of Kotte, and also Mayadunne and Vijayabahu (the brothers of Bhuvanaike Bahu), in turn, to oppose the Portuguese. It was the Hindu ruler, the Zamorin of Calicut (the majority of whose subjects were Kerala and Tamil Muslims) who assisted them by sending troops and ships to fight the Portuguese.

Professor Courtnay in his ‘History of Ceylon’, (pp. 13-14) assures us that had not the Portuguese come to Ceylon the entire Island would have come under the control of the ‘Moors’, while local historians have lent support to the fear that Tamil would have become the dominant language of the whole of Ceylon had it not been for the arrival of the Portuguese.³

Notes

1. The name Yavana was derived from the term ‘Ionians’, the early Greeks with whom the Indians became acquainted; and in the ancient Tamil and Sanskrit periods the term denoted the Greeks in general. In subsequent times the Arabs who succeeded the Greeks were also referred to by this name. The name ‘Sonogan’ is derived from the word ‘Yavannar’, a term by which the Tamils designated the Mohammedan converts to Islam.

2. “Sind may have been the first Muslim principality of India but the first outposts in the country had been established almost a hundred years earlier in the far South”. (‘Indian Heritage’, p. 14, Humayun Kabir.)

“Again in many cases the alternatives for Indian prisoners of war were permanent slavery or acceptance of Islam. The facts combined with active proselytisation led to the growth of a sizable Muslim population, in the course of a few centuries.

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Those who were low in the social scale found in Islam an opportunity to assert their dignity. The more sensitive among the socially privileged were often attracted by its democratic appeal. Besides, Hindu Society looked askance at released prisoners of war and they often had no option but to join the Muslim fold.” (ibid. p. 19).

3. “The affairs of Ceylon were at that time in a most critical condition. All the trade in the Island was in the hands of the Moors. The wealth which this had brought them rendered them powerful and gave them a great ascendancy over the native rulers. They took advantage of their quarrels and sustained by the Zamorin of Calicut whose subjects they were, their aim at that time was to become the absolute rulers of Ceylon. The arrival of the Portuguese saved the Sinhalese from the slavery of the Moors.”

“The Sinhalese owe to the Portuguese their national existence. Had not the Portuguese landed in Ceylon there would be no Sinhalese today, they would have all become Moormen”. (Professor Courtenay “History of Ceylon”, pp. 13-14).

“If the Sinhalese nationality still survives, if they had not been forcibly transformed into Moormen, they owe it to the Portuguese”. (ibid. p. 60).

The above appears to be an exaggerated analysis of the situation (by the Catholic historian) when the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon. In any case the same accusation may be leveled against the Portuguese. Had not the Dutch and later the English arrived, the greater part of Ceylon would have become Catholic.

It is however true that Islam gave the death blow to Buddhism in North India between the years 1175 and 1340, and that Sumatra, Java, Malaya where once Buddhism and Hinduism had existed side by side, became completely Islamised. But the Portuguese too did the same in Goa and in the Philippines.

Notes on ‘Ceylon Moors’ and ‘Coast Moors’

The ‘Ceylon Moors’ represent the earlier Muslim settlers in Ceylon from South India. The ‘Coast Moors’ consist of those who came later to Ceylon from South India for purposes of trade and had intended to return to their homes, but were prevented from free movement by the Portuguese and the Dutch who had taken command of the maritime regions of Ceylon. Both the Portuguese and the Dutch treated them harshly because (1) they refused to become converts to Christianity (2) they were their rivals in trade.

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The ‘Ceylon Moor’ calls himself ‘Chonakan’ and his co-religionist from South India Chammankaran. The Sinhalese however, call both the classes indiscriminately ‘Marakalaha’ or ‘Marakala Minisu’, terms derived from the two Tamil words ‘maram’ = ‘wood’ and ‘kalam’ = ‘vessel’.

The word ‘Sampankaran’ (T) or ‘Sambankaraya’ (S) is not, as is generally supposed, derived from ‘Sampan’ meaning ‘a boat’ but rather from the Tamil ‘Saman’, a word familiar to the Sinhalese as well. Saman (‘Chaman’ -) in Tamil means, ‘things’, ‘wares’, hence ‘Samankaran’ is ‘one who deals in wares’. In South India too the word ‘Sampan’ is used to denote a particular species of boats, but the Muslims there are not called ‘Sampankarans’.

(cf. Chammankodu – Bankshall Street in Colombo; Sammanturai in theEastern Province in the Kalmunai district is exclusively occupied by Moors.)

The Malays were referred to by the Tamils as ‘Chavakar’ (Yavanese) and not as ‘Champankarar’. cf. Chavakachcheri. Cheri () in Tamil means ‘a street’, ‘a group of houses generally occupied by people of the same caste’. The term Chavakachcheri or (Javakacheri) refers to a small group of ‘Javakar’ or ‘Malays’ (as referred to by European writers) who had been quartered there by the Dutch during their regime in the Northern Province. It is not as Dr. Paranavitane and Codrington suppose, ‘a colony’ of Malay soldiers who are supposed to have been brought by Chandrabhanu.

Hambantota and Hambankaray

1. Though the Moors had introduced the basic elements of civilised life to the Sinhalese occupying the South Western region of the Island – clothing such as the men’s ‘sarongs’ and the women’s ‘cambayam’, and ornaments made out of silver and chank such as ear-studs and bangles, in the later centuries, after the arrival of the Europeans, their services were forgotten and they came to be treated with a degree of contempt by the Sinhalese as revealed in the term ‘Hambayas’, and in derivations given to the term ‘Marakalaya’, in Sinhalese works of the recent date such as the Jinawamsa. The Jinawamsa derives the word ‘Marakalaya’ from the two Tamil words ‘Ma’ (Maha) and ‘Kallan’, rogue, because they have much trickishness. This is a fanciful and malicious derivation as will be shown below.

2. As already indicated, the distinction drawn between ‘Ceylon Moors’ and ‘Coast Moors’ is absolutely unwarranted. All Moor citizens of Ceylon were and are Ceylon Moors who had come over from South India and settled down as either traders

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or skilled workers. Some of the earlier settlers had married among the Persian families who were obliged to remain in towns like Galle and Matara after the Portuguese occupation of the coastal regions. Others intermarried with the Muslim and Javanese settlers who were brought later by the Dutch. Their home language, however, continues to be Tamil, as originally the majority of these Moors were South Indian Tamil converts to Islam. The town in the Southern Province known as Hambantota is obviously from the two words ‘Sampan’ a Chinese word for a special type of boat used by them and adopted by the Javanese, and ‘Thotti’ (T) (). ‘Sampan’ () meaning ‘a boat’, has found a place in Tamil dictionaries. The word ‘Thotti’ is a Tamil word meaning ‘a town’ on the sea shore surrounded by salt marshes’.

It is known that for about fifty years from 1409, after the Chinese Admiral Cheng-Ho captured Alagakkonara, South Ceylon became a tributary of China. For many centuries earlier Chinese merchants had visited the ‘Emporium’ at Galle (‘Kalai’ in Tamil), to exchange wares with South Indians, Axumite and Persian traders who visited it.

Hambantota was in all probability a Chinese port of call which was later occupied by the Javanese and the Tamil speaking Moors. ‘Saman’ as distinguished from ‘Sampan’, is a Tamil word meaning ‘things’ or ‘goods’. The word ‘Sampan’ and ‘Saman’ would seem to have become identified later by the Sinhalese who began to call the Moors Hambankarayas (i.e. the Tamil ‘Saman-Karar’) a term which became in course of time converted into ‘Hambayas’.

The terms such as ‘Marakalaya’ and ‘Hambankaraya’ used to signify the Moors in Sinhalese, are derived from Tamil ‘Maram’ wood and ‘Kalam’ vessel, boat. Al –

‘man’, person in Tamil - Marakalay – ‘Al’, again became ‘Marakala Minisu’ in Sinhalese. Similarly the Tamil ‘Saman’ (things, goods) became Hambankaraya and was further corrupted in Hambayas. (Generally (S) became (H) in Pali-ised Sinhalese.)

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