[All the people of this city, as well as of the rest of India, have a custom of perpetually keeping in the mouth a certain leaf called Tembul, to gratify a certain habit and desire they have, continually chewing it and spitting out the saliva that it excites.  The Lords and gentlefolks and the King have these leaves prepared with camphor and other aromatic spices, and also mixt with quicklime.  And this practice was said to be very good for the health.[NOTE 4] If any one desires to offer a gross insult to another, when he meets him he spits this leaf or its juice in his face.  The other immediately runs before the King, relates the insult that has been offered him, and demands leave to fight the offender.  The King supplies the arms, which are sword and target, and all the people flock to see, and there the two fight till one of them is killed.  They must not use the point of the sword, for this the King forbids.][NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.—­KAIL, now forgotten, was long a famous port on the coast of what is now the Tinnevelly District of the Madras Presidency.  It is mentioned as a port of Ma’bar by our author’s contemporary Rashiduddin, though the name has been perverted by careless transcription into Bawal and Kabal. (See Elliot, I. pp. 69, 72.) It is also mistranscribed as Kabil in Quatremere’s publication of Abdurrazzak, who mentions it as “a place situated opposite the island of Serendib, otherwise called Ceylon,” and as being the extremity of what he was led to regard as Malabar (p. 19).  It is mentioned as Cahila, the site of the pearl-fishery, by Nicolo Conti (p. 7).  The Roteiro of Vasco da Gama notes it as Caell, a state having a Mussulman King and a Christian (for which read Kafir) people.  Here were many pearls.  Giovanni d’Empoli notices it (Gael) also for the pearl-fishery, as do Varthema and Barbosa.  From the latter we learn that it was still a considerable seaport, having rich Mahomedan merchants, and was visited by many ships from Malabar, Coromandel, and Bengal.  In the time of the last writers it belonged to the King of Kaulam, who generally resided at Kail.

The real site of this once celebrated port has, I believe, till now never been identified in any published work.  I had supposed the still existing Kayalpattanam to have been in all probability the place, and I am again indebted to the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Caldwell for conclusive and most interesting information on this subject.  He writes: 

“There are no relics of ancient greatness in Kayalpattanam, and no traditions of foreign trade, and it is admitted by its inhabitants to be a place of recent origin, which came into existence after the abandonment of the true Kayal.  They state also that the name of Kayalpattanam has only recently been given to it, as a reminiscence of the older city, and that its original name was Sonagarpattanam.[1] There is another small port in the same neighbourhood, a little to the north of Kayalpattanam, called Pinna Cael in the maps, properly Punnei-Kayal, from Punnei, the Indian Laurel; but this is also a place of recent origin, and many of the inhabitants of this place, as of Kayalpattanam, state that their ancestors came originally from Kayal, subsequently to the removal of the Portuguese from that place to Tuticorin.