Legend of Parasu-Râma.

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the author of the Brahmânda Purâna' really is to establish the fact that the Brahmins have a divine right in Kerala. Thus,' he says, 'Parasu-Râma gave Kêrala to the Brahmins.' It is not improbable that in that misty period of Indian history, when the only figures that can be dimly seen are Parasu-Râma and the Kshatriyas, the former fighting against and almost annihilating the latter that dark chapter,' as Professor Max Müller calls it, 'marking,' as he thinks, 'the beginning of the hierarchical supremacy of the Brahmins '—the Brahmins then first established themselves in the hilly country between the Western Ghauts and the sea, called Malayâla or Malabar, that is, hill country." And it was no doubt subsequently necessary for the Brahmins, who were in the first instance immigrants, probably from Madura, to keep up their prestige by a renewal from time to time of their claim to the patronage of ParasuRâma, the great Brahmin hero. This would be especially necessary in Malabar; for, from the important and wealthy Kshatriya families still there as rajahs and lords of the manors, the rajah of the Cochin territory being among the number, we may conclude that they were formerly there in great force. Hence, no doubt, the legend that the low lands by the sea, probably reclaimed in these comparatively recent times from the domain of ocean, had been miraculously wrested from Varuna's

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hands by Parasu-Râma, for the special behoof of the Brahmins. And hence Parasu-Râma became the patronsaint of Kêrala. Scarcely is there a temple of note to be found which has not its own legend of its having been founded by him. Every Brahmin grâma, or village, claimed the immediate protection of this demi-god. Every youth to this day, in Kêrala, knows the legend of the ‘Brahmânda Purâna;' and yearly, from the 27th of August to the 3rd of September, the great feast of the Onum, there is a universal holiday with great rejoicings, when it is supposed that Parasu-Râma descends from the Mahendra mountains, or Indra's heaven, and visits his people.

But our boat has been progressing under sail and oar, and we are now opposite to a place of great interest from its historical associations. To our right is Cranganore, now only a small village, but once the most prominent seaport on this part of the coast. That old time-battered watch-tower, which crowns that corner of land jutting out into the Backwater, is all that remains of its ancient fortifications. To the south, where you see that narrow strip of sand between the Backwater and the sea, and on the other side of which you see the white lines of the breakers, as the swell of the Indian Ocean there expends its momentum, there was some centuries ago an opening into the Backwater; through this opening the largest ships

Solomon's Gold.

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could enter, and found in the waters on which we are now scudding along one of the finest harbours in the world.

Probably on the very spot over which now our little boat is sailing, ships of Hiram's and Solomon's navy had anchored in safety nearly 3,000 years ago, while the monsoon has swept over the coast; for this, I have little doubt in my own mind, was one of the ports where Hiram's' shipmen that had knowledge of the sea,' and the servants of Solomon,' collected their cargoes of gold, ivory, apes, and peacocks. India was one of the first, if not the first, of gold-yielding countries. It was the El Dorado of Phenicians, Egyptians, Arabians, and Persians. Though it is probably many centuries since the ancient gold-fields of India were exhausted, as the diamond-fields of Golconda may be ere long, yet some memories of the past still live unmistakably in the names of places. The Ponnany, a river that drains the Coondas, and part of the Neilgherries, and still yields a small quantity of gold, carries in its first syllable a memory of the past; Pon in the oldest dialect of the country signifies gold. On the Coromandel coast too we have a Pennar river, which is properly Ponnar, or gold-river. Ivory has always been, and still is, one of the exports of this part of India: and with regard to Solomon's peacocks, it is unquestionable that they came from the Western Ghauts; for as Dr. Caldwell has pointed out in the introduction to his Comparative Grammar' of

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the Dravidian tongues, the Hebrew word for peacock, which occurs in the Book of Kings, is identical with the name of this bird in the ancient vernacular of the country, and is to this day current in the Tamil language to express the peacock's tail.

Could the stones that lie about on this now almost desolate spot become vocal with human speech they would have many a tale to tell of the days that are no more.” Many a romance, that no magician's art can now extract from the past, has been enacted in the heart of this Indian Tyre, where the fiery sons of Ishmael, and the demurer Armenian, and the turbaned Persian, and the bearded, hard-bargaining Jew, have met for commerce. Here, according to local tradition, was the gospel of the Lord Jesus preached first in India. While St. Paul was engaged in the busy centres of the west, Athens, and Corinth, and Rome, another apostle had found his way to Cranganore.

With the strong faith that no doubt characterised St. Thomas's life from the day when was wrung from him the exclamation ‘My Lord and my God,' and a zeal heightened by a never-dying remembrance of his first unworthy doubt, and of his Lord's condescension in affording him every evidence of His resurrection, he sought the most glorious country of the old world, and its then probably most prominent city. And in Cranganore he preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus to the swarthy sons of India.

Nor, as I believe, was it only to Hindus that he brought the message, for there was probably already a settlement of Jews here. Certain it is that a large colony of Jews settled at Cranganore soon after the destruction of the Temple by Titus. According to their own account, 10,000 Jews came there from Palestine in the year A.D. 70. This is a large figure. But if even we allow that a tithe of that number came, we must conclude not only that Cranganore was a place of considerable importance and celebrity, but that Jews had most likely already settled there. Here it was that, coming probably with some Jewish refugees, the first Christian missionary in India preached of 'the world to come,' and 'the resurrection of the dead;? and that missionary an apostle. The Christians of St. Thomas, or Nazarene Christians, as they often style themselves, still exist in considerable numbers on the coast, having originally spread north and south from Cranganore.

As not a few writers of note have expressed doubts as to the truth of the tradition concerning the Apostle Thomas's mission to India, I shall take occasion in a future chapter, when I am to speak more particularly of that ancient Christian Church which claims him as its founder, to enter at length into my reasons for accepting that tradition as most probably founded on fact.

In the meantime we must leave Cranganore, and speed on our way to Cochin. Years ago, by one of those strange