Malayalam-speaking Jews from the Kochi (previously Cochin) district of Kerala, located along the Malabar Coast in southwestern India, are known as Cochin Jews, Cochini, or Kerala Jews. The Paradesis (White Jews), Malabaris (Black Jews), and Meshuchrarim (Meshuchrarim) were three caste-like groupings of Cochin Jews (Brown Jews). Only about 50 Cochin Jews survived on the Malabar Coast in the early twenty-first century, despite once numbering in the thousands.
The Jews of Cochin have a written history dating back to around 1000 CE. The inscriptions on a headstone dated 1269 are among the earliest known Hebrew inscriptions in Kerala. The Cochin Jews, on the other hand, arrived on the Malabar Coast much earlier, and there are allusions to Jewish traders from the Cochin region in the genizah (repository) of a Cairo synagogue from the 8th and 9th centuries.
