Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/744

 THOMAS

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THOMAS

■way to India. In a letter of 18 Sept. of the same year, addressed to the Society at Rome, he has left an in- teresting account of the degenerate .state of the Chris- tians he found there, who were Nestorians. He also tells us they render special honours to the Apostle St. Thomas, claiming to be descendants of the Chris- tians begotten to Jesus Christ by that Apostle. By 1680 when the Carmelite Vincenzo Maria di Santa Catarina landed there he found Christianity quite extinct, only faint traces yet lingering. The extinc- tion of this primitive Christianitj' is due to the op- pression of the Arabs, who now form the main popu- lation of the island, and to the scandalous neglect of the Nestorian Patriarchs who in former times were wont to supply the bishop and clergy for the island. When St. Francis visited the island a Nestorian priest was still in charge.

VI. There is one incident of the long period of iso- lation of the St. Thomas Christians from the rest of the Christian world which they are never tired of re- lating, and it is one of considerable importance to them for the civil status it conferred and secured to them in the country. This is the narrative of the ar- rival of a Syrian merchant on their shores, a certain Mar Thoma Cana — the Portuguese have named him Cananeo and styled him an Armenian, which he was not. He arrived by ship on the coast and entered the port of Cranganore. The King of Malabar, Cheru- man Perumal, was in the vicinity, and receiving infor- mation of his arrival sent for him and admitted him to his presence. Thomas was a wealthy merchant who had probably come to trade; the king took a liking to the man, and when he expressed a wish to acquire land and make a settlement the king readily acceded to his request and let him purchase land, then unoc- cupied, at Cranganore. Under the king's orders Thomas soon collected a number of Christians from the surrounding country, which enabled him to start a town on the ground marked out for his occupation. He is said to have collected seventy-two Christian famiUes (this is the traditional number always men- tioned), and to have installed them in as many separate houses erected for them; attached to each dwelling was a sufficient piece of land for vegetable culti- vation for the support of the family as is the custom of the country. He also erected a dwelling for him- self and eventually a church. The authorization to possess the land and dwellings erected was granted to Thomas by a deed of the paramount Lord and Kajah of Malabar, Cheruraan Perumal, said to have been the last of the line, the country having been subse- quently divided among his feudatories. (The details given above as well as what follows of the copper plate grant are taken from the "Report".) The same re- cords also speak of several privileges and honours by the king to Thomas him.self, his descendants, and to the Thomas Christians, by which the latter commu- nity obtained rank and a social status above the lower classes, and which made them equal to the Nayars, the middle class in the country.

The deed read as follows: — " May Cocurangon [per- sonal name of the king] be prosperous, enjoy a long life and live 100,000 years, divine .servant of the gods, strong, true, just, full of good deeds, reasonable, pow- erful over the whole earth, happy, conquering, glori- ous, rightly prosperous in tlic service of the gods, in Malabar, in the city of the Mahadova [the great idol of the temple in the vicinity "f Cranganore] reigning in the year of Mercury on the seventh day [Portu- guese text: elle no tepo de Mercurio de feu to no dia, etc.] of the month of March before the fvdl moon the same king Cocurangon lieiiig in Carnallur there landed Thomius Cana, a ch\r( man who arrived in a ship wish- ing to see the farthest parts of the East. And some men seeing how he arrivi-d informed the king. The king himself came and saw anil sent for the chief man Thomas, and he di.fembarked and came before the

king, who spoke graciously to him. To honour him he gave him his name, styhng him Cocurangon Cana, and he went to rest in his place, and the king gave him the city of Mogoderpatanam (Cranganore) for ever. And the same king being in his great prosperity went one day to hunt in the forest, and he hastily sent for Thomas, who came and stood before the king in a propitious hour, and the king consulted the astrologer. And afterwards the king spoke to Thomas that he shoidd build a town in that forest, and be made rever- ence and answered the king: 'I require this forest for myself', and the king granted it to him for ever. And forthwith another day he cleared the forest .and he cast his eyes upon it in the same year on the eleventh of April, and in a propitious time gave it to Thomas for a heritage in the name of the king, who laid the first stone of the church and of the house of Thomas Cana, and he built there a town for all, and he en- tered the church and praj'ed there on the same day. After these things Thomas himself went to the feet of the king and offered his gifts, and after this he asked the king to give that land to him and his descendants: and he measured out two hundred and sixty-four ele- phant cubits and gave them to Thomas and his de- scendants for ever, and jointlj' sixty-two houses which immediately were erected there, and gardens with their enclosures and paths and boundaries and inner yards. And he granted him seven kinds of musical instruments and all honours and the right of travel- ling in a palanquin, and he conferred on him dignity and the pri\'ilege of spreading carpets on the ground and the use of sandals, and to erect a pavilion at hia gate and ride on elephants, and also granted five taxes to Thomas and his companions, both men and women, for all his relations and to the followers of his law for ever.

The said king gave his name and these princes wit- nessed it. . . ."

Then follow the names of eight witnesses, and a note is added by the Portuguese translator that this is the document by which the Emperor of all Malabar gave the land of Cranganore to Thomas Cana and also to the Christians of St. Thomas. This document, transcribed from the MS. "Report", has been carefully translated into English, as it forms the "Great Charter" of the St. Thomas Christians. The "Report" adds: "and because at that time they reckoned the era in cycles of twelve years according to the course, therefore they say in the Olla [Malay- alam term for a document written on palm leaf] that the said settlement was founded in the year of Mer- cury . . . that mode of reckoning is totally forgot- ten, because for the last seven hundred and seventy- nine years in all this Malabar time has been reckoned by the Quilon era. However, since the said Perumal, as we have said above, died more than a thousand and two hundred years, it follows: that the same number of years have elapsed since the Church and Christians were established at Cranganore." The writer of the "Report" had previously stated "it is one thousand and two hundred and fifty and eight years since Peru- mal died on the first of March". Deducting the date of the "Report." this would give A. D. 346 for his death. Diego de Couto (Decada XII), quoting the above grant in full, says that the .'Syrian Christians fix A. I). 811 as corresponding to the date borne on the grant; the first is far too early, and the second is an approximately probable date. The "Report" in- forms us that the copper plates on which this tleed or grant was inscribed were taken away to Port\igal by Franciscan Fathers, who left behind a translation of the same. It is known that the Syrian Hisliop of Mal- abar, Mar .lacob, had deiiosited" with the I'aotor of Cochin all the Syrian copper grants for saf<> eu.stody; providing however that when neeessarj' access could be IkuI to the s:inie. Couvea at p. 4 of his ".Jornada" savs tiiat after having remaintnl there for some long