“Sankaracharya sat down upon the sand where the small waves swelled and burst at his feet. Muffling his head in a cotton sheet removed from his shoulders, he drew the rosary bag over his right hand, and after enumerating the Deity’s names upon his beads, proceeded to recite the charm of destruction.
“Presently, a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand rose like a sea-bird above the margin of the western main. It increased with preternatural growth, and before half an hour had elapsed it veiled the mid-day light of heaven, and spread over the sky like the glooms of night. A low moaning sound as of a rising hurricane then began to break the drear stillness of the scene, and fierce blasts to career wildly over the heaving bosom of the waters.
“Still the Brahman continued his prayer.
“Now huge billowy waves burst like thunder upon the yellow sands, the zig-zag lightning streaking the murky sky blinded the eyes, whilst the roar of the elements deafened the ears of the trembling crowd. Yet they stood rooted to the spot by a mightier power than they could control. The Rajah, on his elephant, and the beggar crawling upon his knees, all had prepared for themselves one common doom.
“Before the bright car of Surya,[70] the Lord of Day, borne by its flaming steeds with agate hoofs, had entered upon their starry way, the wavelet was rippling, and the sea-gull flapping his snowy wing over the city of Cherooman the Apostate.”
CHAPTER XI.
MALABAR.
The province, now called Malabar, is part of the Kerula Rajya, the kingdom of Kerula, one of the fifty-six deshas, or regions, enumerated in ancient Hindoo history as forming the Bharata Khanda or Land of India. It is supposed to have been recovered from the sea by the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, who in expiation of a matricidal crime gave over to the Brahmans, particularly to those of the Moonsut tribe, the broad lands lying between Go-karna[71] and Kanya Kumari, or Cape Comorin. The country is also known by the names of Malayalim, the “mountain land;” Malangara and Cherun,[72] from the Rajahs, who governed it at an early period. It is probably the kingdom of Pandion, described in the pages of the classical geographers.
By Malabar we now understand the little tract bounded on the north by Canara, to the south by the province of Cochin, having Coorg and Mysore to the east, and washed by the waves of the Indian Ocean on the west. Marco Polo (thirteenth century)[73] speaks of it as a “great kingdom,” and Linschoten (sixteenth century) describes it as extending from Comorin to Goa. The natives assert that the old Kerula Rajya was divided into sixty-four grama or districts, of which only eight are included in the present province of Malabar.[74]