"Thus the Mappillas (Malayalam Mapila\ Tamil Mappilla, a contrac­tion of maha, ‘big’ and pilla, ‘child’, hence ‘big children’) grew as a foreign community mixed with the lowest castes of Malabari natives, emerging in about the thirteenth century as the privileged intermediaries of trade with the Islamic world. As Muslims they began to differentiate themselves from the Jewish and Christian business enterprises from the eleventh century, when the Colas sacked Quilon, disrupted the organi­zation of the trade guilds, and redirected the trade to the smaller ports. In terms of their social function, therefore, the Mappilla Muslims were merely the latest group of outsiders who came to dominate the overseas commerce of Malabar, taking over the role of the Greeks and Romans and their successors, the Nestorian Christians and the Jews. Since anti­quity, in fact, maritime activity had largely been in the hands of for­ eigners. On the other hand, the stereotype ritual isolation and the unusually rigid caste barriers and concepts of pollution of Malayali society were a relatively novel phenomenon, traces of which do not ap­pear before the eighth century. Such ‘brahmanization’ of the social order as occurred in the early medieval period adversely affected the still relatively open maritime orientation of Malabar in the earlier centuries, when Buddhism and Jainism held strong positions. It was in the period of the Kulashekhara of Mahadayapuram, in the eighth to twelfth cen­turies, that the natives of Malabar became almost exclusively agrarian-oriented and brahmans rose to dominance who fostered an increasingly obsessive thalassophobia among the caste Hindus, while permitting the Jews and the Muslims to seize the overseas trade.23 It is no coincidence that the implantation of Muslim communities becomes better visible the more caste prohibitions against trans-oceanic travel and trade seem to obtain a hold on the Hindu population and turns it to agrarian pursuits and production, away from trade and maritime transport. This, at least, is what the Tuscans and Venetians observe in the thirteenth century."