the eighth century, and its absence in the Jewish, have suggested to antiquarians some time between the seventh and eighth centuries as the probable period. The writings of Ptolemy and the Periplus furnish evidence of Brahman settlements on the Malabar coast as early as the first century, and it is probable that immigrant Brahman families began to pour in with the ascendancy of the Western Chalukya kings in the fourth and fifth centuries, and became gradually welded with the pre-existing Nambutiris. All these Nambutiris were grouped under two great sections:--(a) the Vaishnavites or Panniyur Gramakkar, who came with the patronage of the Vaishnavites of the Chalukya dynasty with the boar as their royal emblem; (b) the Saivites or Chovvur Gramakkar, who readily accepted the Saivite teachings from the Chera, Chola, and Pandya kings who followed the Chalukyans. They included in all sixty-four gramams, which, in many cases, were only families. Of these, not more than ten belong to modern Travancore. These gramams constituted a regular autocracy, with four talis or administrative bodies having their head-quarters at Cranganore. It appears that a Raja or Perumal, as he was called, from the adjoining Chera kingdom, including the present districts of Salem and Coimbatore, was, as an improved arrangement, invited to rule for a duodecennial period, and was afterwards confirmed, whether by the lapse of time or by a formal act of the Brahman owners it is not known. The Chera Viceroys, by virtue of their isolation from their own fatherland, had then to arrange for marital alliances being made, as best they could, with the highest indigenous caste, the Nambutiris, the males consorting with Sudra women. The matriarchal form of inheritance was thus a necessary consequence. Certain tracts of Kerala, however, continued under direct Brahman sovereignty, of which the Ettappalli chief is almost the only surviving representative."