A rock inscription of Asoka carries the first known mention of Kerala

Background

The Kerala Legislature's own profile of the State sets out the long record. The first known mention of Kerala occurs on one of the rock inscriptions left by Asoka, the Mauryan emperor, during the third century B.C. It was then an independent kingdom known as Kerala putra, which was ruled by the powerful Chera dynasty until the fifth century A.D. The history from the sixth to the eighth centuries A.D. is obscure. From 825 AD - the year in which the "Kolla" era began - Kerala rose to prominence under the Kulasekhara dynasty, and the ninth and tenth centuries formed a golden age that marks the origin of Malayalam as a separate language. An eleventh-century hundred years' war with the Cholas broke the Chera kingdom into innumerable principalities; by the beginning of the 14th century the ruler Ravi Varma Kulasekhara established a short-lived supremacy over the whole of Southern India, and after his death Kerala became a conglomeration of warring chieftaincies, of which Calicut in the north and Travancore in the south were the most important. The year 1498, when Vasco de Gama landed at Calicut, marked the beginning of the era of foreign intervention and occupation. The Portuguese superseded the Arab traders in the 16th century; the Dutch ousted the Portuguese in the 17th but met a crushing defeat at the hands of King Marthanda Varma of Travancore in 1741. The invasions by Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan between 1766 and 1790 paved the way for British power, and Cochin and Travancore were obliged to accept British suzerainty in 1791 and 1795. The Zamorins' territories in the north were annexed by the British and constituted into the Malabar district of the Madras presidency under their direct rule. Unsuccessful revolts against British rule were led by Pazhassi Raja of Malabar and by Velu Thampi of Travancore, both of whom were martyred. On 1st July 1949 Travancore and Cochin were integrated into a new State of Travancore-Cochin, and when the states were reorganised on a linguistic basis on 1st November 1956 the Malabar district was added to form the new state of Kerala; the Tamil speaking southern region of old Travancore became part of Tamilnadu. The word Malayalam, the profile notes, is an alternative name for Kerala and means "the land of mountains and sea".