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The god Parashurama, "Rama with the battle-axe", the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, is credited with creating Kerala. Born a brahmin, he set out to re-establish the supremacy of the priestly class, whose position had been usurped by arrogant kshatryas, the martial aristocracy. Brahmins were forbidden to engage in warfare, but he embarked upon a campaign of carnage, which only ended when Varuna, the all-seeing god of the sea, gave him the chance to create a new land from the ocean, for brahmins to live in peace. Its limits were defined by the distance Parashurama could throw his axe; the waves duly receded up to the point where it fell. Fossil evidence suggests that the sea once extended to the Western Ghats, so the legend reflects a geological truth. Ancient Kerala is mentioned as the land of the Cheras in a third-century BC Ashokan edict, and also in the Ramayana (the monkey king Sugriva sent emissaries here in search of Sita), and the Mahabharata (a Chera king sent soldiers to the Kurukshetra war). The Tamil Silappadikaram ("The Jewelled Anklet") was composed here and provides a valuable picture of life around the time of Christ. Early foreign accounts, such as in Pliny and Ptolemy, testify to thriving trade between the ancient port of Muziris (now known as Kodungallur) and the Roman Empire. Little is known about the early history of the Cheras; their dominion covered a large area, but their capital Vanji has not been identified. Other contemporary rulers included the Nannanas in the north and the Ay chieftains in the south, who battled with the Pandyas from Tamil Nadu in the eighth century.
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At the start of the ninth century, the Chera king Kulashekhara Alvar - a poet-saint of the Vaishnavite bhakti movement known as the alvars - established his own dynasty. His son and successor, Rajashekharavarman, is thought to have been a saint of the parallel Shaivite movement, the nayannars. The great Keralan philosopher Shankaracharya, whose advaitya ("non-dualist") philosophy influenced the whole of Hindu India, lived at this time. Eventually, the prosperity acquired by the Cheras through trade with China and the Arab world proved too much of an attraction for the neighboring Chola empire, who embarked upon a hundred years of sporadic warfare with the Cheras at the end of the tenth century. Around 1100, the Cheras lost their capital at Mahodayapuram in the north, and shifted south to establish a new capital at Kollam (Quilon). When the Portuguese ambassador/general Vasco da Gama and his fleet first arrived in India in 1498, people were as much astounded by their recklessness in sailing close to Calicut during monsoon, as by their physical and sartorial strangeness. Crowds filled the streets of Calicut to see them, and a Moroccan found a way to communicate. Eager to meet the king, whom they believed to be a Christian, the Portuguese were escorted over 29km in torrential rain to his palace. However, da Gama soon found that the gifts he had brought from the king of Portugal had not made a good impression. The zamorin (raja) wanted silver and gold, not a few silk clothes and a sack of sugar.
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