|
Syrian
Christian is an umbrella term for any Christian living in Kerala”
was the first piece of information I got as I set out to gather
information for this article. “They could be Latin Cathuolics.”
My informant went on, “such as the Syrian Christians who went
over a the Pope after the advent of the Portuguese, or Latin
Christians who are mostly fishermen who were converted much later and
the only common factor is that they all come under the Pope.”
The liturgy or language used for the church service would vary from
Latin to Syrian to Malayalam.
Then there are the
Jacobites who belong to the Orthodox Church, or Eastern Church, which
prides itself on being older than the Church of Rome. It was at
Antioch (now in Turkey) that the disciples were first called
Christians. The language that earliest missionaries used to spread
their message through the continent of Asia was Syriac, a dialect of
Eastern Aramaic and so closest to the language that Christ himself
must have used. Of these were two factions, the Patriarch’s
side who owed allegiance to the Patriarch of Antioch and the
Malankara Orthodox Church that appointed its own bishop at Kottayam,
which is an important centre of the Syrian Christian community in
Kerala set amidst a lush countryside of rubber, tea, coffee, teak and
pepper, plantations. All of them, I was told, are known as Jacobites.
As far as I could make out, they held their services in Syrian.
I was then introduced to
another group who claim to be a part of the Mar Thoma Church.
“Sometime in the last century there was a reform movement in the
Jacobite Church. Possibly because of the influence of the Protestant
missionaries who did not see any merit in the worship of Mary, or in
the need for the prayers of the Dead, which they felt was part of the
whole system of worship of the Catholics, there was a movement of
rebellion and reform. From this came the Mar Thoma Church, a mixture
of Protestant and Jacobite, who conduct their service in Malayalam.
“Quite apart from
this there is also an Anglican Church started by the British
Missionaries and the sect calling themselves the Nestorian Christians
who have small congregations at Trichur, Ernakulam and Trivandrum.”
By now I was totally confused. It is possible that I may have left
out some sub-groups. My apologies to them.
In some ways one can
compare the Christians to the Parsis they are an ethnic religious
group within the Indian social frame who have retained their identity
and absorbed the flavour of their surroundings. They have strong
affiliations to the place of their birth, yet they look Westwards for
the spiritual spark that gives them their special status. Whereas
the Parsis came as a persecuted people, as perhaps some groups of
Syrian Christians in the ninth century, the majority of Syrian
Christians are of native stock.
The Syrian Christian
tradition is that St. Thomas, one of the original apostles of Christ,
came to India in 52 A.D. He was known as Doubting Thomas because
legend has it that he could not believe his eyes when he saw the
risen Christ and touched one of Christ’s wounds. He was shocked
to find that it still bled. It is said that when St. Thomas landed
at Musir5is, which everyone believes to be the present sleepy hamlet
of Kodungallur, a Jewish girl playing a flute was there to welcome
him. The ties between this stretch of the Kerala coast and those of
the Middle East go back to the time of Solomon who used to send his
ships to trade in the wealth of the ancient spice coast. St. Thomas
may have taken the overland route across the Palghat gap in the
Western ghats to find his way to Mylapore, or Meliapore as the Greeks
would have it, suburb of Madras where the elegant Cathedral of San
Thome stands serenely with the sea and the sky as the backdrop. The
cave on St. Thomas Mount, where he was murdered still stands and no
airborne visitor to Madras can miss this landmark on an otherwise
flat plain.
Some of the legends
connected with St. Thomas’ life are intriguing. It is said that
when the apostle set to work he found a group of Brahmins or
Nambudiris, as they are known in Kerala, standing in a poll of water
performing their ritual prayers throwing the water over themselves.
He is supposed to have chided them gently about their gods who could
not accept their offerings and asked them if they would convert if he
showed them how powerful his god was. They agreed and when he got
into the water and threw the water up, the droplets stayed in the
air, while even the surface of the pool was dimpled with the mark
that his hand had made on it. Not all the Nambudiris agreed to be
converted and the place came to be known as Chavakkad, or accursed
place. With the help of those he had converted St. Thomas set about
creating seven churches one of which now remains at Niranam and still
retains its old glory.
The next important person
to make his mark on the Christian landscape of Kerala was Thomas
Cana. A merchant, he came with a large number of men, women and
children in the middle of the fourth century (A.D.) from Babylon,
Ninevesh and Baghdad. The details are shrounded in controversy, but
in the Persian city of Ishaha, there are written documents that speak
of a connection between the Christians of this city and a king of
South India. Cana’s descendants in Kerala are distinguished for
the fairness of their complexion, distinction that they tried to
preserve by not marrying out of the community. The Knanyi Thomas’s
as they are known were again divided into a northern faction and
southern faction, based on those who were the immediate descendants
of Thomas Cana and who lived around him, and those who were his
followers, who lived a little to the south of the leader’s
house.
Thomas of Cana or Knayil
Thomas was apparently received with full honours by Cheruman Perumal,
the reigning king of the Chera country. Amongst the various marks of
favour that would signal their status, was the right to carry a royal
umbrella. This would seem a negligible honour, but in Kerala, where
the rain lashes the countryside with indiscriminate fury, it was very
practical one. During royal feasts, the Christians could expect to
be served on a double layer of banana leaf as another mark of honour,
and even today some of them observe this by tucking in the ends of
their banana leaf.
Like other merchant
communities, the Syrian Christians affirmed their comfortable status
by eating well and communal feasts are still an occasion when this
alimentary bond can be displayed and shared. They, more than any
other group, have learnt the culinary secrets of the colonizers, even
though some of the older Syrian Christian families abstain from
eating beef in defence perhaps to their Hindu origins. Some are even
vegetarian.
It was the same Cheruman
Perumal who is said to have conferred the title of Mapillais on the
Christians as against the designation “Pillai” or children
that he used for his ordinary subjects. Another theory is that one
of the Pandian kings from Tamil Nadu apparently attacked the Chera
kingdom and routed the army. At this point the Syrian Christian
women marshaled every household implement that they could get –
the stone pestles used in grinding, the long wooden ones used for
husking the rice grains, the flat-bladed knives for hacking a coconut
open – and offered resistance. Seeing them, the men of their
community took heart and forced the Pandeians back, for which reason
they are known as the Mapillias or Mama’s boys, a most unlikely
story, let it be added.
More lasting than any; of
the royal tokens of favour that Cheruman Perumal granted them was the
right to trade. Since in Kerala at that time, there was no merchant
class as such, the Christians filled the role quite well although
they had occasionally to fight both the Jews and the Arabs for the
pepper monopoly. Pepper was the main reason for the Portuguese
appearing on the scene in search of an easier sea route to India,
with Vasco da Gama making early overtures to one Kerala ruler after
the other.
If they had stuck to
trade nobody would have minded too much, but the Portuguese were also
in search of souls to save and to harvest for the kingdom of God.
“The extraordinary thing about the Syrian Christians is that
they have never been interested in conversion,” commented Jaiboy
Joseph, a journalist. It was something that the Western Christians
were never able to understand. This trait could have contributed to
the Syrian Christians’ ability for survival through so many
centuries without being assimilated. It would also explain their
need to maintain their links with Antioch, one of the great centres
of the Orthodox faith. The Portuguese could not bear the ‘heathen’
Christians daring to defy the authority of Rome. They tried to
re-educate the Kerala Christians first by persuasion at the Synod or
conference at Udayamperur (Diamper in English). Here one of the
native priests signaled his contempt by appearing with his pants over
his head, his shirt through his legs to show how upside-down the
world had become. The Portuguese were not amused and began
destroying the existing documents, whether written on palm leaves or
leather or inscribed on copper plates, which lies one reason why
there are so few records available. Finally they brought in the
Inquisition.
The Syrian Christians
however did not submit for long. When one of the emissaries sent to
them from Antioch was detained by the Portuguese at Mylapore,
thousands of them took what came to be known as: “The Oath of
the Coonen Cross” (Learning Cross). “It was the first
spontaneous uprising on Indian soil against the Western powers,”
said a senior member of the community with obvious pride. Their
leader was proclaimed the head of the Church.
It is also quite
extraordinary to listen to the sonorous chanting of the priest in the
Mar Thoma Church reciting the prayers in front of the simple wooden
Cross before him a helper swinging a globe shaped censor with the
heavy fragrance of burning camphor. The long draw out ululations of
the priest could well be as old as those that were heard in Antioch,
Alexandria, or even Constantinople. But he is in fact reciting the
prayers in Malayalam, as indeed are the responses of the congregation
as they stand up to sing their hymns in their moths tongue, ending
with “Alleluias”. It was quite extraordinary, listening to
Indian voices reciting prayers in an Indian language and yet hearing
echoes that went far back into the vaulted dome of time.
| 
