Talk:History of Kerala

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[edit] Regarding the section titled "Overseas contact"

I have a few issues with this section:

  • Jewish people, fleeing persecution in their homeland, migrated to Kerala in the early centuries.
We have got to clearly define what homeland is being referred to here and what the early centuries are.
  • Arab merchants founded Kerala's early Muslim community, the Mappilas, in the 8th century.
Arab merchants very likely had settlements in Kerala well before they became Muslim.
  • According to some the history of Christianity in Kerala dates back to the arrival of St. Thomas the Apostle at Kodungallur in A.D. 52.
This is folklore. Besides we seem to be jumping back in time. This should be mentioned before the arrival of Islam to Kerala to retain chronological order.
  • For a long time this was disputed. However in 2002 The British researcher William Dalrymple travelled across the Arabian Sea to Kerala in a boat similar to those mentioned in ancient Jewish and Roman texts and showed how the Nasrani-Jewish people had travelled to Kodungalloor. He followed the same course as mentioned in the Acts of Thomas, a copy of which survives in a monastery on Mount Sinai.
    The possibility of such a journey is not disputed. Pliny records Muziris(Kodungallur) as the most important sea-port on India's West Coast around the start of the Christian Era. Lionel Casson discusses the sailing patterns of ships via the Red Sea to Kodungallur in his 1988 analysis of Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
    What is disputed is whether the Apostle really did land in Kerala and proselytize. We do have Syrian Malabar folklore that claim this. We also have some East Christian writings that claim the Apostle was buried on India's East Coast.
  • A Christian-Jewish community was later established by a contingent of Jewish Nasranis led by Knai Thoma (Thomas of Cana) who arrived in 345. Cheraman Perumal, the then king of Malabar issued a proclamation giving land and privileges to the Knanaya Yehudeya(Jewish)-Nasranis on copper plates on a Saturday in March (Kumbham 29), 345. This was followed by another round of migration from Syria recorded in the Tharisappally records from around the 8th century.
    The growth of the Christian and Muslim communities is not captured by references to these specific migrations. I feel we will have to beef it up with accounts of settlements and trading-outposasasasts these merchants were allowed to build as well as their elevation in the social heirarchy in the various Keralite kingdoms.
  • When the Portuguese arrived in the early 1500s, they tried to impose Roman Catholicism on the original Syrian-Christian (Nasrani) people. A section of Nasranis (also called Syrian-Christians in Kerala) resisted the conversion attempts of the Portuguese to bring them under Romans or the Pope with Latin rite, and remained faithful to ancient Hebrew-Jewish traditions using original Syriac/Aramaic language for their liturgy.
    This is overly simplistic and false. The Synod of Diamper forced the Nasranis into communion with Rome. Following this Bishop Menezes had the Inquisition brought in and went Church by Church Romanizing parishes. When Portugese hegemony over Kerala waned, the Nasranis started to rebel againt Roman control. The Incident of the Leaning Cross is among the mroe famous acts of rebillion. After such incidents became widespread various Churches around West Asia and the Roman Catholic Church itself sent emissaries to bring the parishes into communion with them. This eventually resulted in the various Syrian Christian denominations of Kerala. British hegemony created the Protestant Syrian Christian denominations of the Marthomites and the CSI.

Comments?(Veliath 16:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC))