Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/515

Rh them to give land for mosques, and to endow them. The Perumāl's instructions were carried out, and nine mosques were founded and endowed in various parts of Malabar. Whatever truth there may be in these accounts, it is certain that, at a very early period, the Arabs had settled for commercial purposes on the Malabar coast, had contracted alliances with the women of the country, and that the mixed race thus formed had begun to be known as the Māppillas. These Māppillas had, in the days of the Zamorin, played an important part in the political history of Malabar, and had in consequence obtained many valuable privileges. When Vasco da Gama visited Calicut during the closing years of the fifteenth century, we find their influence at court so powerful that the Portuguese could not obtain a commercial footing there. The numerical strength of the Māppillas was greatly increased by forcible conversions during the period when Tippu Sultan held sway over Malabar."[At the Installation of the Zamorin, some Māppilla families at Calicut have certain privileges; and a Māppilla woman, belonging to a certain family, presents the Zamorin with betel nuts near the Kallai bridge, on his return from a procession through the town.] According to one version of the story of the Perumāl, Chēramān Perumāl dreamt that the full moon appeared at Mecca on the night of the new moon, and that, when on the meridian, it split into two, one half remaining in the air, and the other half descending to the foot of a hill called Abu Kubais, where the two halves joined together. Shortly afterwards, a party of pilgrims, on their way to the foot-print shrine at Adam's peak in Ceylon, landed in Chēramān Perumāl's capital at Kodungallur, and reported that by the same miracle, Muhammad had converted a number of unbelievers to his religion.