Malayali

The Malayali are the Dravidian people of Kerala, the Malabar coast of southwestern India, whose mother tongue Malayalam gives the region its name, from mala meaning mountain and ali meaning person. As the Keralaputra Cheras they appear in a third-century BCE Ashokan rock edict, ports thriving on Indian Ocean pepper trade with Arabia, Egypt and China.

After the Chera kingdom dissolved in the twelfth century, the country split into rival chiefdoms, among them the Zamorins of Kozhikode, Kolathunadu and Venad, whose harbours welcomed Arab and Chinese merchants. In the eighth century Adi Shankara of Kerala built his Advaita Vedanta movement, and in the fourteenth century Madhava of Sangamagrama founded the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics, pioneering infinite series.

European intervention opened when Vasco da Gama reached Kozhikode in 1498; Portuguese and Dutch rivals followed, until Marthanda Varma of Travancore broke Dutch power in 1741. After the Third Mysore War of 1790 to 1792 the British took northern Kerala as the Malabar District, leaving Travancore and Cochin as allied princely states.