2 HISTORICAL REMARKS ON 



its common names of Mulievar and Malabar \ all 

 which Pure/ram is firmly believed, by its native Hindu 

 inhabitants, to have parcelled out among different 

 tribes of Brahmens, and to have directed that the en- 

 tire produce of the foil fnould be appropriated to their 

 maintenance, and towards the edification of temples, 

 and for the fupport of divine worfhip; whence it ftill 

 continues to be diftinguifhed in their writings by the 

 term of Kermbboomy, or, " The Land of Good Works 

 " for the Expiation of Sin." 



II. The country thu3 obtained from the fea *, is 

 reprefented to have remained long in a marfhy and 

 fcarcely habitable ftate; infomuch, that the firft oc- 

 cupants, whom Pure/ram is faid to have brought into 

 it from the eaftern, and even the northern, part of 

 India, again abandoned it ; being more efpecially feared 

 by the multitude of ferpents with which the mud and 

 flime of this newly immerged tract is related to have 

 then abounded; and to which numerous accidents are 

 afcribed, until Pure/ram taught the inhabitants to pro- 

 pitiate thefe animals, by introducing the worfhip of 

 them and of their images, which became from that 

 period objects of adoration. 



III. The country of Mulyalum was, according to 

 the Kerul Oodpnttee, afterwards divided inta the four 

 following Tookrees, or divifions : 



i ft. From Gowkern, already mentioned, to the Pe- 

 rumbura River, was called the Tooroo, or Turu Rauje. 



2d. From 



"* In a manufcript account of Malabar that I have feen, and 

 which is aicr : bed to a Bifhop of Virapoli, (the feat of a famous 

 Roman Catholic feminary near Cochin.) he obferves. that, by 

 the accounts of the learned natives of that coaft, it is little more 

 than 2300 years fince the fca came up to the foot of the Sukhien, 

 or Ghaut mountains ; and that it once did fohe thinks extremely 

 probable from the nature of the foil, and the quantity of fand, 

 oyfter (hells, and other fragmcnts ; met with in making deep ex- 

 cavations. 



