History Waiting to be Written!

The history of Calicut was believed to have started with the establishment of a medieval port-city by the Eradis of Nediyiruppu who assumed the title of Samoothiri or Zamorin. The tradition of the land having been reclaimed by Parasurama for the settlement of Brahmins as recorded in Keralolppaththi was treated as folklore and not acceptable as lacking in historical evidence. 

Calicut, it was claimed, was a marshy expanse with only salt pans and a rugged sea coast before it suddenly developed in the 12th Century into a bustling sea port which traders from many nationalities frequented and acclaimed as 'the City of Truth'.

An attempt to find the missing links led Dr. MGS Narayanan - Calicut's own historian and Professor of History - to decipher the stone inscriptions dug up in 1970 from the premises of the Panniankara Bhagavati Temple, two kilometers to the south-east of the Calicut Railway Station. It revealed the existence of a King named Iravi Kotha who had donated some land to the temple in the 10th Century A.D. This takes us at least two centuries prior to the establishment of the port city. 

A long way to go to link the City's history from the megalithic finds strewn all over the place to the intrigue centred round the Panniankara Temple which led to the downfall of the Porlathiri dynasty.

Dr. MGS is now writing a popular history of the defeat of the Porlathiri and the founding of the Zamorin dynasty. This is being serialised in the city edition (called Nagaram) of the Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi.

More on Calicut Heritage may be seen at http://calicutheritageforum.googlepages.com