The main industries of the area are connected with the manufacture of coir, mats and handloom clothes. The Government have set up a fishing centre at Azhicode and plans are under way to develop Cranganore as a major fishing harbour on the west coast. There are today a number of educational institutions and Government offices at Kodungallur. The nearest big town is Irinjalakuda some 16 Kms. away. Cochin is at a distance of 25 Km. by road after crossing a ferry(1984).

Azicode is the present harbour area near Kodungallur at the mouth of the river, which recalls the ancient Muziris harbour. This was what prompted the Shrine to receive the Relics of St. Thomas to be built in Azhikode. The area of Azhicode Village in 1971 was 18.27 Km2 with a population of 12580. according to a very recent survey made in 1987 by Marthoma Social Mission which covered 1021 families (6275 pop.), the religious break-up is as follows:

Hindus-37% (High Caste 7%, Ezhavas 75%, Other backward communities 18%)

Christians-11% (Latin Rite 90%, Syrian Rite 10%)

Muslims-52%

Almost 80% of the families live by fishing, mat weaving or doing coolie-labour.

Kodungallur is famous for its ancient temples which are among the worthy specimens of the Kerala style of architecture. One of the earliest is the Siva Temple at Tiruvanchikulam in Cranganore Taluk, which is said to have been founded by the Saivaite saint Sundara Murthi Nayanar and his royal friend Cheraman Perumal Nayanar.

The Kiztali Siva Temple, one of the 18 Tali Temples of Kerala, is situated very near to the Tiruvanchikulam temple. Moreover in Cranganore, there is also the famous Kurumba Bhaghavati Temple supposed to have been built in the Sangam age to commemorate the martyrdom of Kannaki. Kannaki is depicted as the ideal wife in the celebrated legend of Kovalan and Kannaki, presented in the Tamil epic Silappathikaram. Chenkuttuvan enshrined her as the goddess of Chastity.

It was mentioned earlier how the first mosque in India was founded here in 629 by the followers of Cheraman Perumal, believed to have been converted to Islam. The present Cheraman Masjid stands on the site of the original mosque built in Kerala style.

Oldest of the existing Christian churches is the Kottapuram Church near Kodungallur, further up the mouth of the river, where the Portuguese built a fortress. More about the history of the churches will be dealt with in later chapters.

Almost all historians who have written about South India are uniformly of opinion that for considerable periods of time Cranganore was the pre-eminent trading station of India, at least as far as seaborne commerce was concerned.

K. P. Padmanabha Menon : "Of all places in Malabar, Cranganore is perhaps the most important from a historic point of view. We catch glimpses of its early glory through a long vista of misty antiquity. Situated on the western sea-board at a point where the river system that afforded untold facilities for communication with the interior opened its mouth into the sea, Cranganore formed a great emporium of trade from very early times. The Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, each in turn, carried on commerce with the East."9

V. Nagam Aiya : "Varaha Mihira, the great Hindu astrnomer (who lived about the year 550 A.D.) notices in his Brihtsamhita both the country and the people by the names of Kerala and Kairalakas, and mentions Baladevapattanam and Marichipattanam as important towns in Kerala. Kern, Varaha Mihira’s translator, identifies these places with the Baliapattana and the Muziris of Ptolemy and other Greek geographers respectively." 10

T.K. Velu Pillai : "Muziris was in ancient times the most important seaport in the east. From the Chera country was exported to the nations of the west, pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and other spices. This commercial intercourse drained the gold of Europe into India to such an extent that, so far back as the first century A.D., Pliny calculated that fully a hundred million sesterces were withdrawn from the Roman Empire to purchase ‘useless’ articles from the east." 11

 K.M. Panikkar : "The great hoards of Roman coins discovered in Kerala bear ample witness to the extensive character of this trade.

"The main port in Kerala which was the centre of this trade, as Pliny says, was Muziris or Cranganore. It was known in Kerala as Muyirikkodu - it is so mentioned in the so called Christian plates. The earlier Tamil poets allude to it as Mucciri. Periplus mentions that Muziris is a city at the height of prosperity frequented as it is by ships from Arriake and by Greek ships from Egypt. The exports of Kerala consisted mainly of ‘pearl in considerable quantity and of superior quality; pepper in larger quantities and gems of every variety’"12

A. Galletti and The Rev. P. Groot : ".............. Vypeen, which stretches from the Cochin to the Cranganore passage from the sea to the backwater. The spot is one of great historic interest. Cranganore (Kudangalur) said to have been formerly Muyiricodu, has been confidently identified with the Muziris of the ancients, the greatest emporium of India according to Pliny the Elder, which stood ‘on a river two miles from its mouth’, according to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, the river being known as the Pseudostomos or False Mouth, a correct translation of Alimukam, as the mouth of the Periyar is still called. The Greek or other traders of the Roman Province of Egypt were probably as familiar as the Portuguese with the low land or islands fringed with cocoanut trees to the water’s edge of the river and lagoons about Cranganore. These lagoons were the first settlement of the Portuguese when they re-discovered India and established themselves almost simultaneously at Cochin near one passage into the backwater and near Cranganore at Palliport, where the well-preserved remains of their small three-storied octagonal castle built in 1507 A.D. are still to be seen. At Ayacotta, near Palliport, Van der Meyden met the heir of the Zamorin of Calicut and the King of Cranganore and later on the Zamorin in person, and it was agreed to attack the Portuguese forts of Palliport and Cranganore, to divide the loot if the attack should be successful, the Dutch to keep Christian captives, all Portuguese priests to be expelled, the forts to be pulled down, expenses to be shared, the land revenue and other taxes to be shared, the Dutch to administer justice, the Dutch to have all pepper at a fixed price except one-third which the native chiefs or their merchants should keep for their own trade."13

Col. Yule : "It is to Cranganore that all Malabar traditions point as their oldest seaport of renown; to the Christians it was the landing place of St. Thomas the Apostle. The tradition is that the Apostle landed on Malankara, a small island in the lagoon or backwater close to Cranganore in A.D. 52., and planted Christianity for the first time in India; and it is significant that the Metropolitan of the Jacobite Syrians in Malabar still takes his title Bishop of Malankara from that little island." 14

Erakkaddur Thyankannanar : The early Tamil poet Erakkaddur Thyankannanar describes Muchiri (Muziris) or Kodungallur (Cranganore) situated near the mouth of the Periyar as follows: "The thriving town of Muchir - where the beautiful large ships of the Yavanas, bringing gold, come splashing the white foam on the waters of the Periyar, which belongs to the Cherala (Chera or Kerala) and return laden with pepper." 15

Paranar : "Fish is bartered for paddy, which is brought in baskets to the houses; sacks of Pepper are brought from the houses to the market; the gold received from ships, in exchange for articles sold, is brought on shore in barges at Muchiri, where the music of the surging sea never ceases, and where Kudduvan (the Chera king) presents to visitors, the rare products of the seas and mountain". 16

Vincent Smith : "The Tamil land had the good fortune to possess three precious commodities, not procurable elsewhere, namely, pepper, pearls and beryls. Pepper fetched an enormous price in the markets of Europe............ Thamil States maintained powerful navies and were visited freely by ships from both east and west, which brought together merchants of various places eager to buy the pearls, pepper, beryls and other choice commodities of India, and to pay for them with the gold, silver and art-ware of Europe".17

Bjorn Landstrom : "From the ports around the Bab el Mandeb Straits it was now possible to sail in a fortnight with the Hippalus winds to Muziris (Cranganore) in India , where the vessels were loaded with pepper, drugs, dyes, and precious stones-many of these goods coming from countries and islands in the East which Europeans were still almost wholly ignorant of. Indian ambassadors came to the Emperor Augustus at Samos as early as 20 B.C with gifts of various kinds including a tiger and a python". 18

K. V. Krishna Iyer : "In the first three centuries of the Christian era Kodungallur was the centre of the world commerce ............The Roman settlement was called Yavanacheri. Most probably the temple for Augustus dominated it with the characteristic Roman games and festivals ...........A peculiar feature was the hetaera, handsome women skilled in music, dancing and ancillary arts, for the out-of-wedlock companionship of kings and nobles...Kodungallur was not only the hub of the world commerce but also a studium generale or university. Teachers and students flocked to the mantapas or discussion halls of the numerous pandits or Professors , vying with one another for superiority."19

"As is generally the case in India, there has been no regular or continuous record kept of the kingdom of Kerala, its origin and progress, its peoples or its ancient administrations. As Bishop Caldwell justly remarks, ‘It is a singular fact that the Hindus though fond of philosophy and poetry, of law, mathematics and architecture, of music and the drama, and especially of religious or theosophic speculations and disquisitions, seem never to have cared anything for history’. Its history therefore remains to be written. There are, however, ample materials for a good and reliable account lying scattered about all over the land." 20

Believed to have been reclaimed from the sea by the mythical sage Parasurama, Kerala was really formed by the annual deposit of silt brought down by the rivers from the slopes of the Western Ghats. It is one of the smallest states of India with an area of 37940 square kilometers (14820 square miles). Hemmed in between the mountain and the sea, it is but a ribbon of land 580 kilometers (360miles) long, with a width ranging between 8 and 122 kilometers (5 and 76 miles) 21. Recent archaeological evidences indicate that Kerala had become the home of man at least as early as 4000 B.C.

As the mountain-ranges to the north and the seas to the south have decisively influenced the history, culture and character of the peoples of India, so also the Western Ghats in the east and the Arabian Sea in the west have influenced the political, cultural and economic life of the people of Kerala. "This land itself was a secret, shared between the sea and the mountain, an illegitimate child of the two natural forces, protected by and provided for by them in a special way. Therefore there was an assurance of plenty and of peace."22

Kerala is as old as any Puranic Kingdom referred to in the ancient Indian epics. In Valmiki’s Ramayana Sugriva the king of the monkeys commands his messengers looking for Sita devi to; "Seek and search the southern regions, rock and ravine, wood and tree . Search the empire of the Andhras, of the sister nations three , Cholas, Cheras and the Pandyas dwelling by the Southern sea."

Again Hanuman jumps over to Sri Lanka from the Mahendragiri, a lofty peak in South Kerala. The Chera king is said to have supplied provisions for the belligerent armies in the field of Kurukshetra besides furnishing large contigents of fighting men. Katyayana (4th century B.C.) appears to have been acquainted with the geography of Kerala.The second and thirteenth edicts of Asoka (3rd century B.C.) refer to the territories of Keralaputra as the ‘Pratyantas’ of the imperial dominions. The vivid description of the enchanting land in the Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa and its mention in Srimad Bhagavatha and the Vayu, Matsya, Padma, Skanda and the Markandeya puranas show that Kerala was not an unknown land at the time of their composition. 23

According to Megasthenes (303 B.C.) its King Cheraman had only sixty elephants while his neighbour the pandyan had as many as five hundred . In the Arthasastra (300 B.C.) Chandragupta’s minister, Kautilya, mentions the pearls of the Churna or Periyar and the ivory of the elephant forests of Mahendragiri in the erstwhile Travancore among the precious articles brought every year to the Mauryan treasury. He says also that South India is richer than North India and its roads better and easier to travel. So Chandragupta’s successor, the warlike Bindusara Amitraghata (297-272 B.C.) invaded the south in 278 B.C., and slaying the king and ministers of sixteen capitals, attempted to enter Kerala by levelling the Aramboli route for his war chariots. But the Tramiradesasanghatam or confederacy of Tamil states drove the Vampa Moriyas or arrogant Mauryas back to their homes. 24

The second and thirteenth rock edicts of Bindusara’s son, Asoka (272-232 B.C.) as already mentioned, give clear evidence of Kerala, one of the border-lands of his empire. Kerala was the kingdom of the Chera King who was known as ‘Keralaputras’ at the time of the edicts of Asoka. The ‘Colobotras’ of Pliny, the ‘Keprobotras’ of The Periplus, the ‘Kerobotras’ of Ptolemy were Greek equivalents of the Keralaputra of the Asokan edict of 257 B.C. The ‘Limurike’ or the ‘Damurike’ of the Greek writers of the centuries before and after Christ seems to be identical with Kerala. 25

Pliny : Pliny the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus, A.D. 23-79), Roman naturalist has left us in his Encyclopedic Natural History, in 37 books, a prodigious collection of second hand information. In his description, given below, we have accurate accounts of the journey to India and to the Malabar coasts in the first century.

"To those who are bound for India, Ocelis is the best place for embarkation. If the wind, called Hippalus happens to be blowing it is possible to arrive, in forty days at the nearest mart in India, Muziris by name. This however, is not a very desirable place for disembarkation, on account of the pirates which frequent its vicinity, where they occupy a place called Nitrias, nor in fact, is it very rich in articles of merchandise. Besides, the road stead for shipping is a considerable distance from the shore, and the cargoes have to be conveyed in boats, either for loading or discharging. At the moment that I am writing these pages, the name of the king of this place is Caelobothras. Another port, and a much more convenient one, is that which lies in the territory of the people called Neacyndi, Barace (Porakkadu) by name. Here king Pandion used to reign, dwelling at a considerable distance from the mart in the interior, at a city known as Modiera (Madura). The district from which pepper is carried down to Barace in boats hollowed out of a single tree, is known as Cottonara." 26.

Concerning the return journey, Pliny thus continues; "Travellers set sail from India on their return to Europe, at the beginning of the Egyptian month of Tybia, which is our December, or at all events before the sixth day of the Egyptian month Mechir, the same as our Ides of January; if they do this they can go and return in the same year. They set sail from India with a south-east wind, and upon entering the Red Sea, catch the south-west or south."

The Periplus : The author of the Periplus speaks in admiring terms of the chief Malabar ports of Muziris (Cranganore) and Barace (Porakkadu). "There is exported pepper, which is produced in only one region near these markets, a district called Cottonara (Kuttanadu)27.

It has been said that the Romans lacked interest in geography, that they merely counted the mileposts along their roads, whereas the Greeks attempted to map the world. And true it is that one of the most important geographical documents from Roman times, the Periplus Maris Erythraei - Navigation of the Red Sea (i.e. the Indian Ocean) - was written by an Egyptian Greek. He wrote his navigational manual for the benefit of others in 90 A.D., and we are still able to read it in transcription today in the Codex Heidelbergensis. The interest evinced by Pliny and the author of the "Navigation of the Red Sea" in Kerala and in her exports was however only the culmination of trade relations that existed for many centuries before the commencement of the Christian Era between India in general and Kerala in particular on the one hand and African, Arabian and European ports on the other. Consequent to the invasion of India by Alexander the Great geographical and cultural aspects of India became widely known in the west. Perumalil S.J. in his work already mentioned 28 has collected a large number of references to India from or based on Arrian, Strabo, Plutarch, Herodotus, Diodorus, the Periplus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Megasthenes, Deimaches, Dionysios and others. 29 Considering the nature and occasion of the present volume and also limitations in the matter of time, it is not possible to make more than passing references to the great store of Indian information possessed by the ancient writers. However perusal of even a few of these authorities will completely shatter the notion that the ancients when talking about India did not really know what they were talking about. 30

Traces of trade along the Persian Gulf route are to be found in the 14th century B.C. cuneiform inscription of the Hittite kings of Mittani in Cappadocia 31. In the Moon Temple of Mugheir in Chaldea and in the palace of Nebuchad Nezzar, both of the 6th century B.C., the teak-wood of Malabar has been discovered. Malabar teak has been discovered at Ur and king Solomon’s fleet had contacts with Kerala. 32

The Adventures of Eudoxus : Eudoxus from Asia Minor was one of the first private explorers we hear mention of. He made his very remarkable journeys about 110 B.C. He was a relatively rich man willing to sacrifice his fortune at the altar of high adventure. There is an Indian, who plays an important role in this adventure story. Now it so happened, so the story goes (Strabo/Poscidonius), that a certain Indian was brought to the king by the coast guards of the Red Sea who said that they had found him half dead and alone on a stranded ship, but that they did not know who he was or where he came from, since they did not understand his language; and the king gave the Indian into the charge of men who would teach him Greek, and when the Indian had learnt Greek, he related that on his voyage from India he by a strange mischance mistook his course and reached Egypt in safety, but only after having lost all his companions by starvation; and when his story was doubted, he promised to act as guide on the trip to India for the men who had been previously selected by the king; and of this party Eudoxus, also, became a member.

"So Eudoxus sailed away with presents; and he returned with a cargo of perfumes and precious stones............ But Eudoxus was badly disappointed, for Euergetes took from him his entire cargo".

Hippalus : Today it is believed 33 that Hippalus the pilot accompanied Eudoxus on his voyage to India, and that the route, which the Indian pilot showed them in gratitude for their saving his life, was the monsoon route. The Arabians and Indians must, of course, have known and made use of the monsoon winds for centuries. These winds blow over the Indian Ocean from the north-east in winter and from the south-west in summer; if a man knows the right season to choose, they will carry him straight across the sea in reasonable comfort. When direct passage from India to Egypt became more common, it was these winds that were used, and they came to be called the Hippalus Winds.

After the records of the early Greek authorities mentioned earlier, there appears a break in the western accounts of Malabar and India, perhaps due to the rise of a new Parthian Empire which formed a sort of barrier between the Greeks and the Indians.

Then Rome started to absorb the remnants of the Empire of Alexander. Syria had fallen; Egypt became a Roman province in 30 B.C. 34 After Actium Augustus settled down to organise and regulate his vast possessions. Already at the time of Augustus, about 5 A.D., Strabo speaks of noticing about 120 ships sailing from Myos-Hormos to India 35. These ships must have gone to the coast of North India along the coastal waters of Arabia and the Indus mouth. The Romans were not satisfied with such a circuitous route to South India. We read in Strabo (15-1-4) of the South Indian king, Pandion sending an embassy to Augustus; and in Pliny, 6.22 (24), of the king of Ceylon, impressed by the unheard of justice of the Romans whose denari were all of equal weight, despatching to Nero’s Rome 4 ambassadors of whom the chief was Rachis (Raja). It was in Nero’s reign that the Arabs first came under Roman dominion, and Aden and Socotra became Roman colonies. By this time not even the routes to China were unknown. When the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D. many Jews emigrated and many arrived in India, and even to China according to Hebrew and Chinese inscriptions.

When, as seen earlier, the Romans finally established a direct searoute to India, Muziris was the chief port they touched, not only because it was the nearest and most accessible port, but also because Muziris and Porakkad could provide them with the commodities which they most valued.

About Europe in general and England in particular which was the last western power involved with India it has been said, "the history of Modern Europe and emphatically of England, is the history of the quest of the aromatic gum, resins and balsams, and condiments and spices, of India etc. 36"

"it should not escape notice that gold and silver, after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, come at length to be absorbed in Hindustan.37" When Persia and Egypt fell beneath the power of the Arabs one of the spoils of their victory was the Indian Trade. 38 Herodotus tells us that India is the wealthiest and most populous country on earth. As Sir George Birdwood has remarked. "The entire record of the intercourse between countries of the west and India from the very earliest times to the present day may be said to be the story of the struggle for the Indian trade". 39

The chief commodity exported from Cranganore was pepper and the fair reputation of Malabar pepper had already reached the four corners of the known world from the earliest centuries B.C. So much so it is called Yavana Priya (beloved of the Romans). We have already seen the description of the hillocks of pepper bags at Muchiri (Puram 343). In addition to what the periplus has to say on the area where pepper is produced in Malabar (56. Vide infra note 26), we also have there a list of ports(viz. Thundis, Muziris, Nelcynda and Barace) from which pepper was exported. Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 6th century speaks of ‘Male where pepper grows’ and of ‘Male which has fine marts that export pepper’ (b.3).

Pepper was in great demand in Rome at the time of Pliny. "It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so much into fashion, seeing that in other substances which we use, it is sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes their appearance that has attracted our notice; whereas, pepper has nothing in it that can plead as a recommendation to either fruit or berry, its only desirable quality being in certain pungency; and yet it is for this that we import it all the way from India. Who was the first to make trial of it as an article of food? And who, I wonder, was the man that was not content to prepare himself by hunger only for the satisfying of a greedy appetite?"40.

Yet, in spite of Pliny’s complaints this demand for pepper continued in Roman circles. The continued use of it in cooking raised its price to 15 denarii a pound for long pepper, 7 for the white, and 4 for the black pepper. 41.

This vigorous trade in pepper and other spices of India began to drain the Roman Empire of its wealth. Pliny is stupefied at the thought of this drainage. He says; "The subject (of setting forth the whole route from Egypt to India) is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain our empire of less than five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces, giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully one hundred times their prime cost". and elsewhere: "At the very lowest computation, India, the Seres, nd the Arabian peninsula drain from our empire yearly one hundred million sesterces; so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our women". What infuriates him further is that, "Both pepper and ginger grow wild in their respective countries, and yet here we buy them by weight like gold and silver". 42

[Some 300 years later pepper was still valued highly in Rome, Alaric the Goth we find, asking for 3000 pounds of pepper as an important part of the ransom to raise the siege against Rome. (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, XXXI)] Pliny minces no words when speaking out against that inordinate and costly fondness of Roman women for the luxury goods from Muziris:

"Our ladies glory in having pearls suspended from their fingers, one, two or three of them dangling from their ears, delighted even with the rattling of pearls as they knock against each other; and now, at the present day, the poorer classes are even affecting them as people are in the habit of saying that ‘ a pearl worn by a woman in public is as good as a lictor walking before her: Nay even more than this, they put them on their feet, and that not only on the laces of their sandals, but all over the shoes; it is not enough to wear pearls, but they must tread upon them, and walk with them under foot as well". Again, "I once saw Lollia Paulina, the wife of the Emperor Caius - it was not any solemn ceremonial, but only at an ordinary betrothal entertainment - covered with emeralds and pearls, which shone in alternate layers upon her head, in her hair, in her wreaths, in her ears, upon her neck, in her bracelets and on her fingers, and the value of which amounted in all to 40,000,000 sesterces; indeed she was prepared at once to prove the fact by showing the receipts and acquittances".