The Geography of the Puranas c11.s5.8

c11.s5.8

*Kerala and Setuka.* South of Kanara the structure and climate of the coastal plain between the scarp of the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea give it a distinctive personality. The region is known as Malabar—a land of great heat, high humidity, lagoons, sand dunes and greater width of the lowland. It had for centuries the world monopoly of pepper and cardamom. The Malabar coast down to the southernmost tip of the peninsula had always remained an independent territory isolated from the rest of India by virtue of its position between the Ghats and the sea. An Aśoka edict mentions two independent kingdoms of the southern peninsula, viz. that of Keralaputra or the Malabar Coast, and that of Satiyaputra, probably equivalent to the Satyamangalam province of the later kingdom of Madura. Kerala of the Purāṇas, therefore, corresponds to the present Kerala State while Setuka corresponds to its eastern hinterland near the cardamom hills.