3.1. Myth legend and History:
Writers some times mix up history with myth and legend. . “Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience.” (Ency. Brit. 24, 715) History and Myth “are both narratives, i.e., arrangements of events into unified stories, which can then be recounted. Myth is a narrative of origins, taking place in a time other than that of everyday reality; history is a narrative of events situated in human time.”(Ency. Reli. 10, 273). The tradition of St. Thomas’ arrival in India does not come under the definition of the term myth. The arrival and preaching in actual human time. St. Thomas is no super human being & his preaching does not mark any extraordinary events and circumstances. St. Thomas is a historical person – not mythical or legendary. All the places associated with him in India are historical places Mylapore, Chinnamala, Periamala and all the seven communities in Kerala. Traditions considered myth or legend by certain historians are later on proved to be historical facts on the basis of solid evidence. Eg. Parthian King Gondophares. Acts of Judas Thomas was considered to be mere legend. Legend is an old story handed down from the past, especially one of doubtful authenticity. Once coins with inscriptions of Gondophares were found out, writers recognize him as a hist. person. Historians should not reject simply a tradition without sufficient grounds for doing so.
3. 2. Tradition and historical documents
There is a tendency, especially among the Indian writers to deny simply any historical value for a tradition which is not directly supported by archeological or epigraphic evidence. -We have not yet collected the whole epigraphy and other historical documents. -it is the duty of a historian to see whether the tradition has some historicity. There are books simply denying the arrival of St. Thomas in India. The act of simply denying is to be simply rejected. They will have to prove from their part that it was impossible for St. Thomas to reach Muziris in AD 52. Should not ignore the living tradition. The lack of a written document cannot be considered weightier than the tradition kept by the whole community. Before asserting that St. Thomas did not come to India, one may have to present one’s arguments for his not having come to India.
A.M. Mundadan: “The possibility of one, or even two, Apostles having preached the Gospel in India, and even in China, no serious minded scholar would object to. At the dawn of Christianity there were trade routes connecting West Asia and the East, routes very much frequented. The land routes reached parts of North India, while the sea routes touched the coasts of Kerala and other parts of South India. The tradition as it is found in the Acts and in the witnesses of various authors and Churches make this possibility highly probable. Add to this the living testimony of the community of Thomas Christians and the witness of the tomb of Mylapore, the Little Mount and the St. Thomas Mount in the vicinity of Mylapore, together with the tradition associated with these monuments. In the light of such a combination of the various traditions, scholars are inclined to interpret these as strongly in favour of a certitude of the apostolate of St. Thomas in India.”
3. 3. Brahmins in Kerala
To say categorically that the Brahmins migrated to Kerala only in the 7th-8th centuries of the Christian era is not quite consistent with historical facts. They reached the south-west coast from north in different groups, different epochs and on various occasions. They migrated in large numbers in the 7th-8th centuries AD. The brahminic hegemony began only after this.. Before the 7th-8th c. A.D, there were Brahmins living scattered in Kerala. They might have started entering the south west coast of India already from the 3rd c. B.C. NCERT history text class XI: during the great famine in Magadha 200 years after the death of Mahavira, many a Jaina went to the south under the leadership of Bhadrabahu. ‘Cultural and economic contacts between the north and deep south i.e., Thamilakam [through traders, conquerors and Jaina, Buddhist and some brahmana missionaries] became extremely important from 4th c. B.C. One can with certainty conclude that there was Aryan presence in Kerala before Christ.
Sangham literature c. B.C. 3rd- c. A.D. 3rd speaks of Kerala Brahmins. Akananoor: Chelloor (Perunchelloor, Thaliparambu) -sacrifice of Parasurama. “Perumbanattuppadei” of Pathupattu oldest of the Sangham works refers to ‘Morkolan, prepared using pepper, by Brahmin women in Brahmin villages. Many Brahmin poets wrote admiring the valour of Chera kings of Kerala. Sangham poets Paranar, Kapilar, and Palei Gauthamanar -ten poems each praising Chera kings. Sangham works: Brahmins respected by Muventans = Chera, Chola and Pandya kings. All those Brahmin poets wrote appreciating Chera kings of Kerala were from Chola and Pandya kingdoms? Sangham literature recounts religious and social duties of Brahmins as yagam and making others perform sacrifices, learning and teaching vedas, receiving donations and giving prethigraham. Palei Gauthamanar:Chera kingdom, land filled with aisvaryam..= age of Pathittupathu, one of the most ancient works of Sangham there were Brahmins in Kerala. Kapilar speaks of Chera king who offered gold to Brahmins who offered sacrifice. Arisinkizhar mentions a Puthrakamesti sacrifice of a Chera king. All these = there were Brahmins in Chera kingdom, though we do not know for certain where in Chera kingdom were they settled. It could be from one of these Brahmin families that Sankaracharya came. Difficult to believe: in c. 8th Sankaracharya emerged from a Brahmin family just reached Kalady in the 7th-8th c.
Except Parur and Niranam none of the seven ‘churches’ established by St. Thomas was connected to the 32 gramas of the Brahmins after their mass migration. The Thomas Christians have never tried to connect them to the Brahmin gramas. Even during the period of Brahmin hegemony they have not tried to connect themselves to these Brahmins. The available sources compel us to conclude that there were Brahmins who did not have power, dignity & wealth at the time of the arrival of St. Thomas.
3.4. Historical Evidence & Historical Methodology
For historical evidence, historical methodology is imp. Manuscripts, coins and inscriptions =primary sources. Today for the study of Ethno-history, a growing trend to use people themselves as the primary source. -They themselves may serve as the source material. In and around the 7 communities estd. by St. Thomas, =Christians today. Portuguese documents of 16th-17th c. speak about Christian settlements in these 7 places. So conclude: except for migrations of the last 500 years, Thomas Christians lived in and around 7 centres associated with the preaching of the Ap. Thomas. Unbroken Christian presence in these places itself is a primary source to establish the arrival of St. Thomas in India. Besides, all these 7 places are actual historical places even without having changed their name.
There might not have been conversions from among the Brahmins of the mass migration of 7th-8th c.: 1. were conservatives; 2. had the power of being an organized community. But the earlier migrations were scanty and periodic and so they were prone to changes and adjustments. They did not have hegemony, wealth and power of being a community. It must have been these Brahmins who were converted to Christianity through the preaching of the Apostle Thomas.
3.5. Some Foreign Accounts
Indigenous literature can be supported by foreign accounts. NCERT XI “… Greek and Roman accounts of the first and second centuries AD mention many Indian ports and enumerates items of trade between India and the Roman Empire.” Early documents in Patrology. Ambrose of Milan 4th c., De Moribus Brachmanorum (On the customs of Brahmins) speaks of Muciris & Brahmins there. The author also relates the thousand islands (Lakshadeep). “From the confines of Ethiopia and Persia and from the regions of the Asumitae, people congregate here to buy, sell and exchange goods. Pepper grows here and is harvested in abundance.” So the place under discussion is Kodungallur [Muciris] and Kerala. The author describes a special custom of the natives of Malabar. “The womenfolk live this side [of the river] … to where their husbands come over customarily in the months of July and August … Having spent forty days there with their women, they then return to their own places … This is the life and ‘way of living’ of the Brahmins.” M.G.S. N The Perumals of Kerala: “The reference to the law of primogeniture brings us to another peculiar custom among the Brahmin families of Kerala. Only the eldest son used to marry from the community while other male members carried on sambandam (concubinage) with Nayar or Kshatriya ladies. This law, of which the period of origin remains unknown, must be related to the law of primogeniture and the anxiety to keep Brahmin family property undivided. It would have been evolved only in a society where it is possible for these younger sons of Brahmin families to contract alliances without entailing financial or other responsibilities. …” It is crystal clear that De Moribus Brachamanorum of 4th ? century speaks of Kerala Brahmins who were already more or less settled by that time. If so we wonder why there could not have been some Brahmins among those who embraced Christianity at the time of St. Thomas.
3.6 Conclusion
In the light of all that we have seen, it would be quite unwise and unwarranted to brand the living tradition of the whole community as a mere myth for want of contemporary documentary evidence. When St. Thomas reached Muziris, caste system was not developed. There were Dravidians, Budhists, Jains, and Brahmins. We may reasonably presume that some of the converts must have been Brahmins while many were from other communities. Eventually when Hinduism absorbed Budhism and Jainism, instead of each one mentioning one’s religion, they started saying that they were all from the high caste of the existing religion, especially since some of them were really so. Examining the copper plates of the St. Thomas Christians we notice that they were considered as noble as the highest class of the community even during Brahmin hegemony. It is quite probable that among the Thomas Christians of the first century there must have been a sprinkling of Brahmins who had sporadically migrated to Kerala through the Dakshinapatha.
2 comments:
The claim that St.Thomas converted some Nambudiri Brahmins is contrary to historical fact, since there was no Nambudiri population when St.Thomas visited Kerala. Logan says: “The final Brahmin immigration seems to have occurred in or about the eighth century A.D. and Christian colonies had arrived in the country long before that time.” It has also been inferred that the whole of South India, including Kerala, was in the seventh century A.D. under the suzerainty of the Pallavas of Kanchi. As Prof Elamkulam says: “Legend has it that the Apostle St.Thomas landed at Malankara near Kodungallor in the 1st century, established seven churches and converted many including some Nambudiris to the new faith. The Brahmins who later became Nambudiris arrived only in the 7th. and 8th centuries. Many centuries elapsed before the term Nambudiri was evolved.” Without Nambudiri population in Kodungalloor, how could St Thomas convert Nambudiris? In the last phase of Sangam Age, Brahmins started emerging as the elite class and a large number of Brahmin settlements and temples sprang up in several pars of Kerala. As Woodcock says: “During the medieval era, at a period generally thought to lie between the 8th and 11th centuries, the Nambudiri caste of Brahmins established cultural dominance in Kerala, and froze the pattern of communities into an extremely rigid and complicated form. There were no less than five hundred castes and sub-castes, divided from each other by rigorous rules against intermarriage and by an extraordinary pattern of pollution taboos.” It is quite apparent from a retrospective analysis of these events that there was no Nambudiri caste when St.Thomas came to Kerala. Even on the basis of population, there is inherent improbability in the contention that the Syrian Christians are the descendants of Nambudiri converts. During Col. Munro’s time Christians numbered about fifteen percent of the population, whereas Nambudiris amounted to not more than one percent population of Travancore. As Woodcock says: “To account for this great increase in number and for the spread of the doctrine through almost all the regions which later became the states of Cochin and Travancore, we have to assume a considerable original recruitment from the local population.”
Historical events in Kerala show that Syrian Christians were local converts, especially from Mukkuva and Ezhava castes. In the Synod of Diamper, Archbishop Menzes gave equal freedom and status to out-caste converts such as Parays and Pulayas. This was opposed by Ehava and Mukkuva St. Thomas Christians who formed the majority of congregation. So in a compromise formula of the Synod, Pulayas and Parayas were allowed to sit in the portico of the church. M. G. S. Narayanan says: "This situation helps us to confirm that the ancestors of present day Nambudiris established their temple-centred Gramas in the span of the 8th-9th centuries. As the Brahmins in the historical epochs have always been clan-conscious and conservative, they must have been Brahmins by birth only. They are found to have followed the laws of Dharmasastra texts according to the internal epigraphic evidence. There is no question of conversion of non-Brahmins or the recruitment of non-Brahmins as Brahmins into the Brahmin fold, as these practices are foreign to Dharmasastra literature." It is clear there were no Nambudiris when St. Thomas visited Kerala in the 1st century. There was also no Assyrian Christian migration to Kerala. The 200,000 strong crowd at Coonen Cross pledge site did not consist of Nambudhiris or Assyrians or Jews but Mukkuvas of the coast and Ehavas who alone could be collected by Archdeacon George.
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