In Four volumes

Contents :--
Letter IX.
Account of the Royal houses of Malabar, Travancore, Cochin, the Zamorin and Colastri. Disagreements existing between them.
Letter X.
Laws of the Malabar -- Strange manner of laying seizure on the property of another -- Their trials by ordeal, sometimes thrusting the fingers into boiling oil, sometimes the hand into a basket containing a cobra capella, some-times swimming through a river inhabited by crocodiles -- Strange occurrence -- Their prisous -- The right they possess over slaves -- Sales and purchases.
Letter XI
Revenues of the Rajas of Kochin -- Their mode of Government -- Accounts of the National assemblies collected in cases of emergency.
Letter XII
Of the coinage of India, Rupees, pagodas,etc., and their value -- Of the money current among the Europeans and its value -- Of the fanams, boeseroks and cowries.
Letter XIII
Ecclesiastical and temporal grandees in Malabar -- Customary salutations between the higher and lower orders in their daily intercourse and their mode of showing respect.
Letter XIV
Customs and luxuries of the women in Malabar -- Management of the children -- Wedding etc
Letter XV
An account of the toppasses, their religious ceremonies, Priests and customs.
Letter XVI
Description of the St. Thomas or Syrian Christians -- Their Priests -- Means of bringing them back to the right way -- Their antiquity and history.
Letter XVII
Of the Roman Catholic Priests in Malabar and their converts among the Heathen.
Letter XVIII
Of the Jews, black and white.
Letter XIX
Account of the Moors in Malabar.

"The History of Kerala is a monumental work in four volumes. Chaplain of Cochin (1717-23), Jacobus Canter Visscher wrote descriptive letters to his friends and which were edited and published. K.P. Padmanabha Menon re-edited the English translation of the letters with an extensive and exhaustive commentary. His notes speak eloquently of his wide range of information and study and no less of his power to present the varied material into a highly readable historical narrative. The author has used Visscher's book as the thread on which to string the ancient history of Kerala. It contains cameos on many of the important events and institutions, customs and manners and the salient features of the region, and of its social, political and economic conditions, based as far as possible, on contemporary records."