Text and Tradition: The Dynasty of Villarvattom among Syrian Christians in Kerala, India

Abstract

The present paper introduces, inventories and interrogates prevailing narratives about the complex trajectories through which a putative Syrian Christian dynasty named Villarvattom has taken root in communal genealogies and the popular imagination of Kerala. The paper, by examining historical evidence, argues that the existing historical documents compel us to consider it as a retrospectively invented and imagined tradition necessitated and facilitated by the unique socio-political structures of Kerala viz. the ideational complexes wrought by caste and allied practices, the dislocation caused by successive colonial regimes and the overall crisis experienced by the indigenous Christian community. The paper surveys the present state of literature, discusses explanatory models, points to the possibility of cultural introjection and seeks ways in which the study can be taken forward more comprehensively and productively so that we gain perceptive insights into both the ecclesiastical and secular histories of Kerala. The paper argues that it is an invented tradition, a defence mechanism collectively, and perhaps unconsciously, evolved by the beleaguered Syrian Christians under the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule, which had inflicted debilitating blows to the power and glory enjoyed by this community.

Keywords:

• Caste
• copper-plate grants
• cultural introjection
• invented tradition
• Prestor John
• repetition
• Syrian Christian dynasty
• Villarvattom

Acknowledgments

We thank the two anonymous readers for their extensive and very helpful comments, the majority of which have been incorporated or addressed in the latest iteration. We also thank the libraries of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, which provided a number of books on the subject.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Taken from The Bible, Galatians 3:28, Mark 16:15.

2. George Milne Rae, The Syrian Church in India (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1892): 183–84.

3. W.J. Richards, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas (London: Bemrose & Sons, 1908): 2.

4. See Joseph Kulathramannil, Cultural Heritage of Knanaya Syrian Christians (Sharjah: St. Mary’s Church, 2001).

5. See K.J. John, ‘Emergence of Latin Christians in Kerala: A Brief Introduction’, in Christian Heritage of Kerala, ed. K.J. John (Cochin: George Veliparambil, 1981): 347–54; Adriaan Moens, ‘Roman Christians’, in Dutch in Malabar, ed. A. Galletti (Madras: Government Press, 1911): 171–89; M. Arattukulam and E.P. Antony, The Latin Catholics of Kerala (Kottayam: Pellissery Publications, 1993).

6. Francis Day, The Land of the Perumals or Cochin: Its Past and Its Present (Madras: Grantz Brothers, 1863): 231.

7. Mar Aprem, The Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century (Kottayam: SEERI, 2003); Mar Aprem, The Nestorian Fathers (Trichur: Author, 2002); Mar Aprem, Nestorian Missions (Trichur: Mar Narsai Press, 1976).

8. See C.P. Mathew and M.M. Thomas, The Indian Churches of Saint Thomas (Delhi: ISPCK, 2005); Zac Varghese K. and Mathew A. Kallumpram, Glimpses of Mar Thoma Church History (New Delhi: Kalpana Printing House, 2003); E.M. Philip, The Indian Church of St. Thomas (Nagercoil: LM Press, 1950).

9. The circumstances under which these denominations were born or splintered from other churches are too long and complex for a paper. For a brief introduction to the circumstances of their birth and growth, see K.C. Zachariah, The Syrian Christians of Kerala (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006): 41–88; M.A. Thomas, An Outline History of Christian Churches and Denominations in Kerala (Trivandrum: Author, 1977); Mar Abraham Mattam, The Church of St. Thomas Christians: Missionary Enterprises before the Sixteenth Century (Kottayam: OIRS, 2004): 7–22.

10. Zachariah, Syrian Christians, 91.

11. One cent of land is around 40.46 square metres. 

12. Zachariah, Syrian Christians, 132.

13. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2000): 39.

14. Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1812): 118.

15. Richards, Indian Christians, 2.

16. M.G.S. Narayanan, Cultural Symbiosis of Kerala (Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society, 1972): 1–2.

17. Kesavan Veluthat, Brahman Settlements in Kerala (Calicut University: Sandhya Publications, 1978): 3–4. 

18. Ibid., 39.

19. P.V. Mathew, Catholica Simhasanavum Malankara Sabhayum (The Catholicos Throne and Malankara Church) (Ernakulam: Author, 1975): 7–8.

20. A former untouchable caste.

21. A former agrestic slave caste. For a comprehensive study, see K. Saradamoni, Emergence of a Slave Caste: Pulayas of Kerala (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1980). Duarte Barbosa wrote in the sixteenth century: ‘These [Pulayas] are held as excommunicated and accursed; they live in swampy fields and places where respectable people cannot go; they have very small and abject huts, and plough and sow the fields with rice, they use buffaloes and oxen’: Duarte Barbosa, A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1865): 142–43.

22. Also called Parayas, they were another agrestic slave caste like the Pulayas.

23. A tribal ethnic group of praedial slaves: see Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 4 (Madras: Government Press, 1909): 122–25.

24. George Vargheese, Malankara Nasranikalute Jathyaulkrishtavum Rajyasevananirathayum (The Noble Caste and Patriotism of Malankara Christians) (Madras: Author, 1988): 9.

25. Diamper is the Anglicised spelling of Udayamperur. It is a village in the present district of Ernakulam in Kerala. Its importance lies in the fact that a historic synod under the supervision of the Goan Archbishop Dom General Alexis De Mensis was held there in 1599. This event brought all the Christians in Kerala under the Roman Catholic Church. The legal validity of the synod has been questioned by many church historians: see Jonas Thaliath, The Synod of Diamper (Bangalore: Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, 1999), for a comprehensive critique.

26. Scaria Zacharia (ed.), The Decrees of the Synod of Diamper (Kottayam: Indian Institute of Christian Studies, 1998): 231–42.

27. George Varghese K., ‘Writing Family Histories: Identity Construction among Syrian Christians’, Economic & Political Weekly 39, no. 9 (2004): 897–900; 897–98.

28. G.S. Ghurye, Caste and Race in India (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1932): 2–26; Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010): 21. Within a functionalist framework, the French Catholic missionary, Abbé J.A. Dubois (1765–1848), rationalised caste thus: ‘Caste assigns to each individual his own profession or calling; and the handing down of this system from father to son, from generation to generation, makes it impossible for any person to change the condition of life which the law assigns to him for any other. Such an institution was probably the only means that the most clear-sighted prudence could devise for maintaining a state of civilisation amongst a people endowed with the peculiar characteristics of the Hindus’: Abbé J.A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, trans. Henry K. Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906): 29.

29. P. Sanal Mohan, Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015): 27.

30. Dubois, Hindu Manners, 22–23.

31. Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1978): 164–65.

32. M.N. Srinivasan, Social Change in Modern India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004): 99. There are scholars who argue that caste, at least as it is understood today, was manufactured through bureaucratic-enumerative exercises like census and ethnographic surveys: Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006): 7, 48; Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 25, 32. This position does not explain the pervasive nature of caste as documented in pre-colonial sources and as experienced today. In the explanatory model of Dirks and Bayly, ‘the ontology of caste is rendered as nothing more than an effect of governmentality…[and] this structural emphasis allows successful elision of the question of the possible complicity of the postcolonial interpreter in the practices and discursive constitution of caste’: Dilip M. Menon, Blindness of Insight: Essays on Caste in Modern India (New Delhi: Navayana, 2011): 6; Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics, 99.

33. Romila Thapar, Early India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2003): 9.

34. Barbosa, A Description, 154, 161.

35. Thirty-Four Conferences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabar Bramans in the East Indies, trans. Philipps (London: H. Clements, 1719): ix–x.

36. Adriaan Moens, ‘Memorandum’, in Dutch in Malabar, ed. A. Galletti (Madras: Government Press, 1911): 171. The section titled ‘Syrian Christians’ (171–81) in the book is a succinct record of the matter.

37. Buchanan, Christian Researches, 107–09.

38. Ibid., 117.

39. Thomas Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light in a Dark Land (London: William Brown & Co., 1873): 1–2.

40. Samuel Mateer, The Land of Charity: A Descriptive Account of Travancore and Its People (London: John Snow & Co., 1871): 236.

41. Mateer, Land of Charity, 243.

42. Mateer, Land of Charity, 250.

43. Rae, Syrian Church in India, 3, 10–11, 105.

44. Richards, Indian Christians, 23.

45. C. Achyuta Menon, The Cochin State Manual (Cochin: Government Press, 1911): 290–91.

46. L.K.A. Ayyar, Anthropology of Syrian Christians (Cochin: Government Press, 1926).

47. L.W. Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).

48. Zachariah, Syrian Christians.

49. Susan Visvanathan, The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).

50. Sonja Thomas, Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018).

51. The statement is quoted in Yaacov Yadgar, ‘Tradition’, Human Studies 36, no. 4 (2013): 451–70; 452.

52. Henry Glassie, ‘Tradition’, The Journal of American Folklore 108, no. 430 (1995): 395–412; 399.

53. Tadhg O’Keeffe, ‘Landscape and Memory: Historiography, Theory, Methodology’, in Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Niamh Moore and Yvonne Whelan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): 3–18; 5.

54. Raluca L. Radulescu and Edward Donald Kennedy, ‘Introduction’, in Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Late-Medieval Britain and France, ed. Raluca L. Radulescu and Edward Donald Kennedy (Turnhout: Brepols Publications, 2008): 1–8; 8.

55. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 1–14; 1.

56. Glassie, ‘Tradition’.

57. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 263–308; 263.

58. Glassie, ‘Tradition’, 395.

59. Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2002): 23.

60. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 2.

61. Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions’, 271.

62. Glassie, ‘Tradition’, 399.

63. Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 35.

64. Ibid., 43.

65. M.G.S. Narayanan, Cultural Symbiosis of Kerala (Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society, 1972): 5.

66. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 82.

67. Ghurye, Caste and Race, 8.

68. Ibid., 91.

69. K.M. Panikkar, Malabar and the Portuguese (Bombay: Taraporevala, 1929): 20.

70. Srinivas, Social Change, 9.

71. Antonio de Gouvea, Jordana of Dom Alexis de Menezes: A Portuguese Account of the Sixteenth century Malabar, trans. Pius Malekandathil (Cochin: LRC Publications, 2003): 22–23.

72. de Gouvea, Jordana, v.

73. Buchanan, Christian Researches, 133.

74. Charles Swanston, ‘A Memoir of the Primitive Church in Malayala, or the Syrian Christians of the Apostle of Thomas, from Its First Rise to the Present Time’, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1, no. 2 (1834): 171–92; 179.

75. Hermann Gundert, Keralappazhama (Kottayam: Vidyarthimithram Book Depot, 1959): 28.

76. L.K.A. Ayyar, Anthropology of the Syrian Christians (Cochin: Government Press, 1926).

77. T.K. Joseph, ‘A Christian Dynasty in Malabar’, in Christian Heritage of Kerala, ed. K.J. John (Cochin: George Veliparambil, 1981): 327. Thomas of Cana is believed to have colonised Kodungalloor (earlier known as Crangannore) along with a large number of Christians from Baghdad, Nineveh and Jerusalem in 345 CE or thereabouts: see Ayyar, Anthropology of the Syrian Christians, 50; Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 108–14.

78. T.K. Joseph, Malabar Christians and Their Ancient Documents (Trivandrum: Author, 1929): 7.

79. D. Ferroli, The Jesuits in Malabar, Vol. I (Bangalore: Bangalore Press, 1939): 135.

80. H. Hosten, ‘Peter Louis S.J. or the First Indian Jesuit’, in Kerala Society Papers, Vols. I and II (Trivandrum: Government of Kerala, 1997): 45.

81. Ferroli, Jesuits in Malabar, 134.

82. M.O. Joseph Nedumkantam, Villarvattom (Ernakulam: Book-A-Month, 1953): 73.

83. Kodungalloor is an ancient port city that is intimately connected with the advent of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Kerala. Apart from the religious influx, it was one of the most thriving commercial centres in the region till 1341, when its famed port got silted in massive floods.

84. Frykenberg, Christianity in India, 100.

85. M.O. Joseph Nedumkantam, Keralathile Christhianikal (Christians of Kerala) (Thevara: Janatha Books, 1972): 169.

86. Nedumkantam, Keralathile Christhianikal, 176–77.

87. C.V. Cheriyan, Orthodox Christianity in India: A History of the Malankara Orthodox Church (Kottayam: Academic Publications, 2003): 95.

88. Cheriyan, Orthodox Christianity, 96.

89. Frykenberg, Christianity in India, 114.

90. P.A.S. Mohammed, Keralam Noottantukalkku Mumbu (Kerala Centuries Ago) (Kodungalloor: Ajanta Publications, 1969): 31.

91. Vargheese, Malankara Nasranikalute Jathyaulkrishtavum, 112–17.

92. Joseph Cheeran, Indian Orthodox Church (Kottayam: Kottakkal Publishers, 2007): 60–62.

93. Velayudhan Panickassery, Keralathile Rajavamsangal (Royal Dynasties of Kerala) (Kottayam: DC Books, 2017): 92.

94. Ittoopp Writer, Malayalathulla Suriyani Christianikalude Sabha Charithram (History of Syrian Christians in Kerala) (Changannassery: Mor Adai Study Centre, 2004): 120–21.

95. V. Nagam Aiya, The Travancore Manual, Vol. II (Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1989): 147.

96. K.P. Padmanabha Menon, Kochi Rajyacharithram (History of the Kingdom of Cochin) (Calicut: Mathrubhumi Publications, 1996): 374.

97. A. Mathias Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol. I (Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1989): 162.

98. Mundadan, History of Christianity, 164–65.

99. Dom Francisco Ros S.J. was consecrated as the bishop of all Christians in Kerala after the Synod of Diamper in 1599.

100. Quoted in Pius Malekkandathil, ‘Introduction’, in Jordana of Dom Alexis de Menezes (Cochin: LRC Publications, 2003): 22–23.

101. Ibid.

102. S. Raimon, ed., Perumbadappugranthavari (Trivandrum: Kerala States Archives Department, 2005): 4.

103. Joseph, ‘Christian Dynasty’, 329.

104. ‘Memorandum’, in The Dutch in Malabar, ed. A. Galletti (Madras: Government Press, 1911): 62, 120.

105. This information is taken from the chapter titled ‘The King of Villarvattom’, in V.K. Raman Menon (ed.), The History of Paliyam (Ernakulam: Sanadhanadharmam Achukoodam, 1953): 1–5.

106. Gundert, Keralappazhama, 28–29.

107. C. Curian, An Essay on the Malabar Syrian Church and Community (Kottayam: Church Missionary Society Press, 1872): 14.

108. Ibid., 23–24.

109. See M.N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 35; Sushil Srivastava, ‘Situating the Gentoo in History: European Perception of Indians in the Early Phase of Colonialism’, Economic & Political Weekly 36, no. 7 (2001): 576–77.

110. See Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 84–85; George Mark Moraes, A History of Christianity in India: From Early Times to St. Francis Xavier (Bombay: Manaktalas Publications, 1964): 106–07; R.S. Whiteway, The Rise of Portuguese Power in India: 1497–1550 (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1889): 54.

111. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 281.

112. See Ayyar, Anthropology of Syrian Christians, 205–19, for a detailed exposition.

113. Mohan, Modernity of Slavery, 47. Mohan offers razor-sharp insights into the mechanics and dynamics of conversion. For a general overview, see Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847–1908 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2022): 34–62.

114. P. Shungoonny Menon, A History of Travancore from the Earliest Times (Madras: Higginbotham, 1878): 343.

115. C.M. Augur, Church History of Travancore (Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990): 589.

116. For details, see Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings; W.H. Hunt, The Anglican Church in Travancore and Cochin: 1816–1916 (Kottayam: CMS Press, 1916); for more on Munro, see Jeffrey, Decline of Nair Dominance, 6.

117. Hunt, Anglican Church, 57.

118. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 286.

119. Ayyar, Anthropology of the Syrian Christians, 54.

120. Ibid., 55.

121. For a description of the privileges and social status enjoyed by Syrian Christians, see Mundadan, History of Christianity, 165–74.

122. de Gouvea, Jordana, 16.

123. James Hough, The History of Christianity in India, Vol. I (London: R.B. Seeley & W. Burnside, 1839): 102–03; Jeffrey, Decline of Nayar Dominance, 17.

124. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 287.

125. Jeffrey, in Decline of Nayar Dominance, thoroughly discusses the eclipse of the Nairs; K.M. Panikkar, in Malabar and the Dutch: Being the History of the Fall of the Nayar Power in Malabar (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1931): 98–100, traces the decline of the Nairs to the formation of Travancore under Martanda Varma.

126. J.A. Dubois, Letters on the State of Christianity in India (London: Longman, 1823): 21–22.

127. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 284.

128. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 1–14; 4–5.

129. N.K. Jose, The Synod of Diamper: The First Anti-Caste Struggle in Kerala (Vaikom: Hobby Publications, 1998).

130. Frykenberg, Christianity in India, 92.

131. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, 4.

132. Cheriyan, Orthodox Christianity, 96–97.

133. Elaine Sanceau, The Land of Prester John: A Chronicle of Portuguese Explorations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944): 12.

134. K. Mahadeva Sastri (ed.), Keralacaritam (History of Kerala) (Trivandrum: Government Press, 1931): 5.

135. K.C. Cheriyan, ‘Pallivanavar’, in Kerala Society Papers, Vol. I (Trivandrum: Kerala Gazetteers, 1997): 151–57; 152–54.

136. A. Sreedhara Menon, Kerala District Gazetteers: Alleppey (Trivandrum: Kerala Gazetteers, 1975): 616.

137. Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light, 8.

138. Ibid., 55.

139. M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala (Trichur: Cosmo Books, 2013): 281.

140. C. Achyuta Menon, The Cochin State Manual (Trivandrum: Kerala Gazetteers, 1995): 53, 281.

141. Barbosa, A Description, 146–47.

142. M.G.S. Narayanan, Cultural Symbiosis of Kerala (Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society, 1972): 6.

143. Rae, Syrian Church, 131–32.

144. N.K. Jose, Kerala Christhava Thamra Sasanangal (Christian Royal Grants) (Vaikom: Hobby Publications, 1974): pp. 37–38. A translation can be found in G.T. MacKenzie, Christianity in Travancore (Trivandrum: Travancore Government Press, 1901): 60–61.

145. For a new translation, reading and historical analysis, see M.R. Raghava Varier and Kesavan Veluthatt, Tharisappally Pattayam (Kottayam: National Book Stall, 2013): 102–19; also see Scaria Zacharia, The Decrees of the Synod of Diamper (Kottayam: Indian Institute of Christian Studies, 1998): 25–26; Jose, Kerala Christhava, 9–23.

146. Jose, Kerala Christhava, 6; Zacharia, Decrees of the Synod, 28.

147. Hermann Gundert, ‘Translation and Analysis of the Ancient Documents Engraved on Copper Plates in Possession of the Syrian Christians and Jews of Malabar’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science 30 (1844): 23–53; 24.

148. Joseph, ‘Christian Dynasty’, 337; for a translation and transliteration, see K.N. Daniel, ‘The Kottayam Plate of Vira Raghava Chakravartti’, Indian Antiquary 53 (1924): 185–96.

149. Jose, Kerala Christhava, 34; Zacharia, Decrees of the Synod, 27; Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala, 222.

150. Aiya, Travancore Manual, Vol. II, 147.

151. Gundert, ‘Translation and Analysis’, 122.

152. Jose, Kerala Christhava, 24.

153. Joseph, ‘Christian Dynasty’, 329.

154. Carter Lindberg, A Brief History of Christianity (Malden: Blackwell, 2006): 8–11.

155. Rae, Syrian Church, 126.

156. Yadgar, ‘Tradition’, 455–56.

157. Ibid., 462.