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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(AUGUBT, 1902.
there can be no doubt, should originally have been Ali = 'sea' + Kara = 'shore' (Malayalam) = Alikara, also meaning "808-shore. Next to Elikara, towards the south lies Katamakuti which is evidently Katal + Mukko + Kuti = Katamakuti, meaning the abode of the sea fishermen. The coast line, as known at the time of Megasthenes, 4th Century B. C., certainly ran along the eastern shore of the backwater. For he mentions Tropina, identified by Mr. Dutt with Tripontari, or Trippoonithuray, a few miles inland from Cochin and on the backwater side as lying on the seacoast.
The earlier notices of Malabar do not mention Cochin at all. Among the modiaeval travellers, Nicolo Conti (A. D. 1440) mentions it for the first time as Cocym. It may be noted that this is almost exactly a century after the formation of the harbour, Cochin attained importance only about the time of the arriva of the Portuguese in India. Since then it has been the chief port of Malabar Barbosa, the anonymous Sommario dei Regni in Ramusio, and D'Barros mention it as Cochin, while the Lisbon Editions of Barbosa and Conti have Cochim, Cocym or Cochym. So also Gutschin of Spinger. G. Balbi bas Cochi. It is remarkable that Nicolo Conti in the 15th century and Fra Paolino in the 17th both say that the town was called Kochi, after the small river that flowed by the place. The non-mention of Cochin by the early travellers, and its first mention, so far as at present known, in 1440 by Conti lend colour to the theory that it was formed since the days of the Periplus and Ptolemy, and it is indeed significant that a hundred years had to elapse from the date of the formation of the estuary, before it came to be mentioned for the first time - a sufficiently long period for the port to come into importance.
According to Tamil Historical Texts, the people in the south, 1800 years ago, remembered that in former days, the land extended further south of Cape Comorin) and that a mountain called Kumarikkodu and a large tract of country watered by the Pahruli existed south of Kumari. It is said that, during a violent irruption of the sea, the mountain Kumarikkôdu and the whole of the country through which the Pahruli flowed disappeared.
There are other local instances of the irraption of the sea and the subsidence of the land. The Buddhist annals of Ceylon record one such on the south-western coast of that island in the 2nd century B. C. The island of Rame varam, which is 11 miles long, is only two miles away from the Indian coast, and, till but 3 or 4 centuries ago, there was a rocky causeway connecting Råmêsvarain with the mainland. It is said that about the 15th century this connection was severed by the sea bursting through the chain of rocks that formed the causeway. The abrupt manner in which Point Raman on the coast terminates, and its geological formation, which can be traced across the ridge of the rocks to the island, almost confirm the supposition, and the opinion is strengthened by the records of the Temple at Råmêsvaram, which state that, until the early part of the 15th century, the island was connected with the continent of India by a narrow neck of land and that the Svámi of Råmêsvaram was on particular festivals carried to a temple on the mainland. The sandy ridge known as Adam's Bridge connects Râmêbvaram with Ceylon, thas accounting for the so-called bridge built by the monkey soldiers of the Ramdyana 10 off the coast of Ceylon is the island of Mannar, about 18 miles long.
Extricating ourselves from the halo of legend that surrounds and obscures the Brahman sage, Paraku-Bama, we see in him the leader perhaps of the earliest Aryan colony into South India. The miraculous powers by, which he is said to have reclaimed the land are part and parcel of his mythical character. The very existence of such a personage as Paragu-Rama has been questioned by some authorities. He is asserted to be an incarnation of Vishnu and it is difficult to
6 Dutt's Ancient India, Vol. II. p. 80.
. See Major's India in the Fifteenth Century. 1 Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither, p. 455.
. The Madras Review, p. 225, et seq. After five centuries of separation the South Tadian Railway Company is about to make an attempt to restore the connection between the matnland and the island by means of the Pambao Channel Railway Bridge.
10 The Gazetteer of Southern India, P. 885.
