Legend of Cheraman Perumals

rdf:langString Legend of Cheraman Perumals

rdf:langString The legend of Cheraman Perumals is the medieval tradition associated with the Cheraman Perumals (Chera kings) of Kerala. The sources of the legend include popular oral traditions and later literary compositions. The time of origin of the legend is not known to scholars. It seems the legend once had a common source well known to all Kerala people. The validity of the legend as a source of history once generated much debate among south Indian historians. The legend is now considered as "an expression of the historical consciousness rather than as a source of history". The legend of the Cheraman Perumals exercised significant political influence in Kerala over the centuries. The legend was used by Kerala chiefdoms for the legitimation of their rule (most of the major chiefly houses in medieval Kerala traced its origin back to the legendary allocation by the Perumal). Popular written versions of the legend are infamous for inconsistencies and contradictions (in names of the kings and dates). Even the dates of their compositions are problematic. The Cheraman Perumals mentioned in the legend can be identified with the Chera Perumal rulers of medieval Kerala (c. 8th - 12th century AD). The ghost of the [Cheraman] Perumal haunted the land [of Kerala] in many ways...Each of the large number of principalities that came into existence on the ruins of the Chera[/Perumal] kingdom claimed to be not only a splinter of the old kingdom but also deriving its authority from the donation of the last Cheraman Perumal...Many of these rulers also claimed to step into the shoes of the Perumal in claiming to be the overlord of Kerala. Thus the ruler of Venad or the Zamorin or the raja of Cochin staked this claim in various ways... — Veluthat Kesavan (historian), History and Historiography in Constituting a Region: The Case of Kerala (2018)