tranquillity was now restored, to the present sovereign _Rama Varmer_, who had just entered the twenty-fourth year of his age. Thus ended the dominion of the petty Malabar sovereigns and princes: thus was humanity avenged; and thus were the crimes punished, and the licentiousness suppressed, by which this country had been distracted ever since the tenth century. Before _Vira Martanda_ undertook this expedition, he celebrated, at _Tiruwandaburam_, a horrid festival, which I have described in my _Systema Brahmanicum_. He caused several of the Pagan temples to be burnt; and this crime, one of the most heinous according to the principles of the Indians, could no otherwise be atoned for than by a very peculiar kind of purification. He was obliged by the Brahmans to get a cow made of gold, under which he was forced to creep in order to be freed from his sins. Niebuhr and Anquetil du Perron are therefore in a great error when they assert, that the object of this ceremony was to raise the king to the degree of nobility. Both these authors ought to have reflected, that this tale was invented by the conquered people, to whom the king behaved with great severity, merely for the purpose of ridiculing him. The above golden cow was preserved, in the year 1787, in the royal treasury at _Padmanaburam_. I was at least told so by M. Donaudi, a captain in the king’s service, who had seen it. Of a great part of the above events I was myself an eye-witness: the account given of the rest is taken from the information of persons worthy of credit, and in particular from the valuable manuscripts of Father Cruz Fernandez, a Malabar priest, which contain a minute relation of the war carried on by _Vira Martanda Pala_. I had an opportunity also of consulting a great many original documents, quoted in this work, which were preserved among the archives of the missionary establishment at _Verapole_. I conversed likewise on this subject with the present king and his generals _Martandapulla_ and M. de Lanoy, who all three often came to _Verapole_, and to whom we were indebted, besides other marks of kindness, for freeing our convent, church, and surrounding district, from the payment of all taxes.