The Role of Syriac in India Before the Portuguese Period
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ARAM, 21 (2009) 289-321. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.21.0.2047097 CLASSICAL SYRIAC AS A MODERN LINGUA FRANCA IN SOUTH INDIA BETWEEN 1600 AND 20061 Dr. ISTVÁN PERCZEL (University of Tübingen & Central European University, Budapest) I. INTRODUCTION: THE ROLE OF SYRIAC IN INDIA BEFORE THE PORTUGUESE PERIOD In South India there lives one of the most ancient Christian communities of the world. According to its own founding traditions it consists of two ele- ments: a majority descending from autochthonous Indian populations, among whom the first members were converted – according to tradition – by the Apostle Saint Thomas, and a minority descending from Syrian colonists who – once again according to the local tradition – arrived in India through the sea routes from Persia using the monsoon winds. These two communities are called the Northists (Vadakkumbhagar), that is, the autochthonous Indians, and 1 In whatever new material is presented in this study, the author has no personal merit. This material is the fruit of the joint efforts of a team, which, recently, has founded an Indian Asso- ciation for the Preservation of the Saint Thomas Christian Heritage. Unfortunately, each and every one of those who are working in the folds of and for this Association cannot be remem- bered by name. To mention only a few among many, particular gratitude is due on the part of the author to the following: to Mar Aprem, Honorary President of the Association, to whom he owes all his knowledge on the Chaldean Syrian Church in Thrissur and its antecedents, as well as on its documents; to His Beatitude, Baselios Thomas I, the Catholicos of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church of India, who gave him access to Syrian Orthodox collections and inscrip- tions and who graciously allowed their publication; to Cardinal Joseph Varkey Vittayatthil and Bishop Thomas Chakiath, who gave him access to the Syro-Malabar collections; to the Prior and the Librarian of Saint Joseph’s Monastery Mannanam, Frs. James Thayyil and Saji Cherumudham, as well as to the late Fr. Antony Vallavanthara, all three Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, to whom he owes the knowledge of the stupefying Mannanam collection; to Fr. Johns Abraham Konat, who several times has opened to him his wonderful personal collection; to his close collaborators, Fr. Ignatius Payyappilly and Dr. Susan Thomas, office bearers of the Association, as well as Mr Geejo George, without whose help not a single step could have been taken; to Rev. Dr. George Kurukkoor, to whom he owes whatever he knows about Old Malayalam and its scripts, particu- larly Garshuni Malayalam; indescribable is his gratitude to Prof. Hubert Kaufhold, who has been a teacher for the uneducated, that is, for the author, being an autodidact in Syriac, and a most valuable external collaborator of the Association. Everything presented here is based on a digitis- ing and cataloguing project, now carried on by the aforementioned Association and supported by the German Research Council (via the University of Tübingen) and Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN. The author is also thankful to the able technicians of the digitising project, without whose diligent work nothing could have been accomplished. Last but not least he is happy to thank his friend, Matthew Suff, for carefully proofreading the manuscript of the present study. 11675-08_Aram21_15_Perczel.indd675-08_Aram21_15_Perczel.indd 228989 221/04/101/04/10 009:069:06 290 CLASSICAL SYRIAC AS A MODERN LINGUA FRANCA IN SOUTH INDIA the Southists (Thekkumbhagar), that is, the descendants of the Syrian colo- nists. However, even the founding legends are not that simple. In fact, these legends know about an initial mingling of the two communities, that is, of the indigenous Indians and the newly arrived Syrian Christians2, so that they claim for both communities a mixed anthropological background. In this way, these legends connect both communities to the symbolic (?)3 number of seventy or seventy-two Syrian families arriving together with the merchant Thomas of Kana at a date that is now generally believed to be 345 AD, but about which earlier European travellers, colonisers and missionaries heard many divergent relations, so that the date varies between the first and the eighth century4. It is also true that some Indian Christian scholars recently advanced the hypothesis that most of the Indian Syrian Christians, including the Northists, just like the Muslims of the Malabar coast, are descendants of early immigrants, who inter- married with local women and received a relatively high-caste standing from the local kings. Hence the name Mappilai, equally used for Christians and Muslims, and meaning “adopted child.”5 According to this hypothesis, due to the trade connections there was a steady influx of immigrants on the Kerala coast, antedating the Christian era, which brought not only Jews, Christians and Muslims here, but also Chinese and other ethnicities. Moreover, we are aware of the fact that Syrian Christian communities, other than the Southists, migrated to India at a later date and became an integral part of the Northist community, without any ecclesiastical or caste separation6. 2 See Mathias Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, vol. 1: From the Beginning up to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century (up to 1542) (Bangalore: The Church History Association of India, 1984), p. 95 ff. 3 While this number 72 looks like a symbolic one inspired by the Bible (the 72 elders appointed by Moses and the 72 disciples of Christ), in fact, it is the product of a sheer misunderstanding: as the original Thomas of Kana copperplates have been lost, all the narratives are based on a report by Francisco Roz, first European Metropolitan of Angamaly/Kondungallur (1601-1624), entitled Relação da Serra, whose unedited manuscript is in the British Library (MS BL Add 9853, ff. 86- 99). This document repeatedly speaks about 72 (once 62) houses built by Thomas of Kana’s Syrian community, being – as T. K. Joseph has shown – a misunderstanding of the Malayalam expression ezhupatthirandu viduperu – “seventy-two privileges” – reading vidu, “house,” with long i, instead of vidu. See the “Observations” of T. K. Joseph on Rev. Monteiro D’Aguiar, “The Magna Charta of the St. Thomas Christians,” translated and annotated by the Rev. H. Hosten, SJ, Kerala Society Papers, series 4 (1930): 193-200, here p. 199. 4 M. Mundadan, op. cit., pp. 91-93. 5 A. Yeshuratnam, “Moplahs and Mappillais of Kerala,” manuscript given to the author on 11 February 2008, in Trivandrum. According to Prof. Yeshuratnam, the Muslims are called Chonaka Mappillas and the Christians Nasrani Mappillas. This seems to indicate an analogous role played by them in the Indian society. 6 Source: “The History, Syrian Traditions and Contributions of Thulasserymanapurathu Family,” Thulasseri Manappuratthu Tharavad Padinnyare Kallada-Kollam Kudumbha Charitra Dayaraktari (Chengannur: Thulasseri Manappuratthu Tharavadu Smaraka Charitable Society, 1992), pp. 79-84, here p. 79, and Arun Babu Zachariah, “Judeo-Christian Diaspora in Kerala: An Endeavour in Racial Integration and Resource Sharing,” Journal of Kerala Studies 34 (2007): 41-62, here pp. 46-52. 11675-08_Aram21_15_Perczel.indd675-08_Aram21_15_Perczel.indd 229090 221/04/101/04/10 009:069:06 I. PERCZEL 291 Be this as it may, the Northists and the Southists among the Kerala Christians constitute two different castes (jati) of the Hindu society, meaning endoga- mous groups practising a number of characteristic traditional occupations, two castes that, in principle, do not mingle either with other groups or with each other. However, when the Portuguese arrived on the Malabar Coast at the end of the fifteenth century, they found that the two communities belonged to the same Church, that is, the Assyrian Church of the East, that they celebrated the same East Syrian liturgy, were subject to the same Mesopotamian Bishop and had as local head the same Archdeacon. In fact the latter was not only a priest helping the Bishop, as it should be according to East Syriac canon law, but also a princely person with enormous power over the community, who usually went along accompanied with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of armed soldiers7. On the arrival of the Portuguese this community was mainly located in the kingdoms of Cochin and Venad (Travancore), now corresponding to the southern part of the present-day Kerala State of India, and a part of Tamil Nadu, whence all its modern diaspora spread out. However, in earlier times there lived Christians also on the Coromandel Coast, that is, in the region of Chennai (Madras). These Christians, who must have undergone persecution at the hands of the Hindus in the second half of the ninth century, partly con- verted to Hinduism and partly left the Coromandel Coast and joined their brothers and sisters in Kerala, with whom they intermarried8. At present they are several million strong, and flourishing, and their diaspora is present every- where in the world9. 7 On the Archdeacon, see Jacob Kollaparambil, The Archdeacon of All India, The Syrian Churches Series, vol. 5 (Kottayam: The Catholic Bishop’s House, 1972). See also I. Perczel, “Language of Religion, Language of the People, Languages of the Documents: The Legendary History of the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala,” in Ernst Bremer, Jörg Jarnut, Michael Richter and David Wasserstein, eds., Language of Religion – Language of the People: Judaism, Medie- val Christianity and Islam (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006), pp. 387-428. On the origins of the Archdeaconate, which I tend to date to the beginning of the sixteenth century, see also I. Perczel, “Four Apologetic Church Histories from India,” in The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Ecumenical Studies 24 (2009), pp. 189-217. 8 Francisco Roz, SJ, in his Relação da Serra, mentioned above. Mundadan studied this man- uscript and reports on it and other Portuguese sources: Mundadan, op.