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Vespasian; when a number of these devoted people, escaping from 
the dreadful massacres and sale of captives at Jerusalem, consist- 
ing of men, women, and children, priests and Levites, with such 
effects as they could transport, emigrated from Palestine to India: 
a country probably not unknown to the Jews in more prosperous 
days, at least to those tribes situated near Tyre and Sidon. The 
Medes, Persians, and Abyssinians, had a communication with 
distant parts of India for articles of luxury; and that they carried 
on a considerable trade to its remote provinces before Alexander’s 
conquest, is evident from Strabo, Pliny, and other writers; exclu- 
sive of the maritime commerce already mentioned, from the Peri- 
plus and Grecian historians. It is therefore not improbable that 
some Jewish families, on their dispersion at the first captivity, or at 
some subsequent period, may have wandered to the Malabar coast; 
which my venerable informer assured me was believed by his people 
to have been the case with part of the tribe of Manasseh. 
The fate of the expatriated Jews who wandered to India after 
the destruction of the second temple, until their arrival in Malabar, 
at the conclusion of the fifth century of the Christian aera, is, I 
believe, no where authenticated. At that period the colony reached 
their place of destination; the sovereign of the country, a brahmin, 
treated them with kindness, and allowed them to settle at Crania- 
nore with considerable privileges. There they were established 
many centuries, increasing in wealth and consequence, until, from 
dissensions among themselves, they called in the aid of surround- 
ing princes, and after much cruelty and bloodshed, were driven 
from Cranganore, with the loss of their possessions and pro- 
perty. 
2 U 
