CALICUT, a seaport town on the Malabar coast, in lat. 11° 15' 2" N., long. 75° 15i' E., and six miles N. of Beypur. It is not visible from the ocean, the only building to be seen being a tall white lighthouse. Thick groves of cocoanut trees line the shore, and are divided from the sea by a belt of sand, while undulating green hills rise up behind; and a background of mountains is often hidden by banks of clouds. The name is from Colicodu or Colikukaga, a cock crowing, as Cheru man Permal gave his sword, and all the land within cockcrow of a small temple, to the Zamorin, or raja of Calicut, who attained considerable power in the 15th century. Pedro da Covilliam, the Portuguese, landed here about 1486, Vasco da Gram in 1498 ; in 1501 Alvarez Cabral estab lished a factory here, but the colony was mas sacred, which Da Gaeta revenged, and in 1510 Albuquerque burnt the Zamorin's palace. The Danish Government established a factory in 1752. In 1766, when Ilyder Ali invaded Malabar, the Zamorin shut himself up in his palace and set fire to it, dying with his family in the flames. It
has been repeatedly in the hands of the Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, and Mysoreans, and in 1817 it was restored with Mahe to the French. Tipu Sultan destroyed its flourishing trade, ex pelled from the country the merchants and factors of the foreign commercial houses, caused the cocoanut and sandal trees to be cut down, and ordered the pepper plants in the whole surround ing district to be torn up and hacked to pieces, because these plants, as he said, brought riches to the Europeans, and enabled them to carry on war against the Indians. Besides cocoanut products, coffee, pepper, cardamom; ginger, eocculus Indicus, gingelly seed, turmeric, arrowroot, croton seeds, and terra japonica form articles of export. There are many of the Tiar and 15,837 of the Moplah race in the Calicut district. The population in 1871 was 48,338, of whom 11,983, or 33 per cent., were Shanars, or toddy drawers from the palms.—Imp. Gaz.; Horsburgh ; Bartolomeo's Voyage.