Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/514

MAPPILLA that "among some of them there may be a strain of Arab blood from some early generation, but the mothers throughout have been Dravidian, and the class has been maintained in number by wholesale adult conversion." Concerning the origin of the Māppillas, Mr. Lewis Moore states* that "originally the descendants of Arab traders by the women of the country, they now form a powerful community. There appears to have been a large influx of Arab settlers into Malabar in the ninth century A.D. and the numbers have been constantly increased by proselytism. The Māppillas came prominently forward at the time of the Portuguese invasion at the end of the fifteenth century A.D." "The Muhammadan Arabs," Dr. Burnell writes, † " appear to have settled first in Malabar about the beginning of the ninth century; there were heathen Arabs there long before that in consequence of the immense trade conducted by the Sabeans with India." "There are," Mr. B. Govinda Nambiar writes, ‡ "many accounts extant in Malabar concerning the introduction of the faith of Islam into this district. Tradition says that, in the ninth century of the Christian era, a party of Moslem pilgrims, on their way to a sacred shrine in Ceylon, chanced to visit the capital of the Perumāl or king of Malabar, that they were most hospitably entertained by that prince, and that he, becoming a convert to their faith, subsequently accompanied them to Arabia (where he died). It is further stated that the Perumāl, becoming anxious of establishing his new faith in Malabar, with suitable places of worship, sent his followers with letters to all the chieftains whom he had appointed in his stead, requiring