What is said here of the Brahmans coming from "Lar, a province west of
St. Thomas's," of their having a special King, etc., is all very obscure,
and that I suspect through erroneous notions.
Lar-Desa, "The Country of Lar," properly Lat-desa, was an early name for
the territory of Guzerat and the northern Konkan, embracing Saimur (the
modern Chaul, as I believe), Tana, and Baroch. It appears in Ptolemy in
the form Larike. The sea to the west of that coast was in the early
Mahomedan times called the Sea of Lar, and the language spoken on its
shores is called by Mas'udi Lari. Abulfeda's authority, Ibn Said, speaks
of Lar and Guzerat as identical. That position would certainly be very ill
described as lying west of Madras. The kingdom most nearly answering to
that description in Polo's age would be that of the Bellal Rajas of Dwara
Samudra, which corresponded in a general way to modern Mysore. (Mas'udi,
I. 330, 381; II. 85; Gildem. 185; Elliot, I. 66.)
That Polo's ideas on this subject were incorrect seems clear from his
conception of the Brahmans as a class of merchants. Occasionally they
may have acted as such, and especially as agents; but the only case I can
find of Brahmans as a class adopting trade is that of the Konkani
Brahmans, and they are said to have taken this step when expelled from
Goa, which was their chief seat, by the Portuguese.
