. KERALA, the land of cocoanuts. Keram, MALEAL., a cocoanut tree, a cocoanut ; an ancient kingdom which extended from the Kangarote river in Canara in the north, to Cape Comorin in the south, with the Western Ghats as its boundary on the east. It thus included Malabar and Cauara. This country, according to tradition, was miracu lously reclaimed from the sea by Parasurama. In the 3d century B.C. (Asoka's edict), its king is called Keralamputra (Celobotras, Pliny ; Kera bothrus, Ptolemy ; Ceprobothrus, the Periplus). About the first or second century of the Christian era, a prince of the northern division of Kerala introduced into it a colony of Brahmans from Hindustan, who divided, it into sixty-four districts, and governed it by means of a general assembly of their caste, renting the lands to men of the inferior classes. The executive government was held by a Brahman, elected every three years, and assisted by a council of four of the same tribe. After a time, they appointed, as a chief,
one of the military class, and seem afterwards to have been under the protection of the Pandiyan kings. The language of the Kerala district is of the same stock as the Tamil, but the country does not appear ever to have been subject to the Chola kingdom. In the course of the 9th century, the southern part, that known as Malabar, revolted from its prince, who had become a Muhammadan, and broke up into many petty principalities; among the chief of which was that of the Zamo rin, whom Vasco da Gama found in possession of Calicut in the end of the 15th century. Canara northern division seems to have established a dynasty of its own soon after the commencement of the Christian era, which lasted till the 12th century, when it was overthrown by the I3ellal dynasty. and subsequently became subject to the rajas of Vijayanagar.—Etphin. pp. 219, 220.