Mr. Wheeler quotes Faria y Souza, who refers the object of worship to what is meant for this story (II. 394), but I presume from Mr. Wheeler’s mention of the builder of the temple, which does not occur in the Portuguese history, that he has other information.  The application of the Virgin title connected with the name of the place, may probably have varied with the ages, and, as there is no time to obtain other evidence, I have removed the words which identified the existing temple with that of Durga.  But my authority for identifying the object of worship, in whose honour the pilgrims bathe monthly at Cape Comorin, with Durga, is the excellent one of Dr. Caldwell. (See his Dravidian Grammar as quoted in the passage above.) Krishna Raja of whom Mr. Wheeler speaks, reigned after the Portuguese were established in India, but it is not probable that the Krishna stories of that class were even known in the Peninsula (or perhaps anywhere else) in the time of the author of the Periplus, 1450 years before; and ’tis as little likely that the locality owed its name to Yasoda’s Infant, as that it owed it to the Madonna in St. Francis Xavier’s Church that overlooks the Cape.

Fra Paolino, in his unsatisfactory way (Viaggio, p. 68), speaks of Cape Comorin, “which the Indians call Canyamuri, Virginis Promontorium, or simply Comari or Cumari ‘a Virgin,’ because they pretend that anciently the goddess Comari ‘the Damsel,’ who is the Indian Diana or Hecate, used to bathe” etc.  However, we can discover from his book elsewhere (see pp. 79, 285) that by the Indian Diana he means Parvati, i.e.  Durga.

Lassen at first[1] identified the Kumari of the Cape with Parvati; but afterwards connected the name with a story in the Mahabharata about certain Apsarases changed into Crocodiles.[2] On the whole there does not seem sufficient ground to deny that Parvati was the original object of worship at Kumari, though the name may have lent itself to various legends.]

[Illustration:  Cape Comorin (From a sketch by Mr. Foote, of the Geological Survey of India)]

NOTE 2.—­I have not been able to ascertain with any precision what animal is meant by Gat-paul.  The term occurs again, coupled with monkeys as here, at p. 240 of the Geog.  Text, where, speaking of Abyssinia, it is said:  “Il ont gat paulz et autre gat-maimon si divisez,” etc. Gatto maimone, for an ape of some kind, is common in old Italian, the latter part of the term, from the Pers. Maimun, being possibly connected with our Baboon.  And that the Gat-paul was also some kind of ape is confirmed by the Spanish Dictionaries.  Cobarrubias gives:  “Gato-Paus, a kind of tailed monkey. Gato-paus, Gato pablo; perhaps as they call a monkey ‘Martha,’ they may have called this particular monkey ‘Paul,’” etc.