millennium is testimony to the hospitality of their neighbors and their
capacity to adapt and respond in the Indian environment.
Syrian Christians
There is abundant evidence that Christians, generally called “Syrian
Christians,” were living along the coast of Kerala by at least the mid-fourth
century. Legends claim this community was founded by the apostle Thomas
who is said to have died in South India. Historical reality is much less clear.
It is believed from references in Greek texts that Thomas did visit the
court of Gondophernes, a Bactrian Greek “king” situated in the upper Indus
Valley. What is also known is that one Thomas Canaof Edessa in Syria landed
on the southwestern coast around 345 CEtogether with a group of followers
apparently fleeing persecution by more “orthodox” Christians.^6
These early communities of Christians were supplemented by other
heterodox Christian groups. These included some Nestorians who were con-
sidered to have unorthodox views of the Christ figure and refused to accept
the doctrine of Theotokos (Mary as “Mother of God”). Many Nestorians,
however, moved further eastward into China. Another unorthodox group
that migrated into the southwest were the Monophysites, a group founded
byEutychus, who claimed Christ had only a single, divine nature. Both of
these movements provided clergy for the Kerala Christians. These early
Christians came to be known as Jacobites, who maintained ties to the Syrian
ecclesiastical hierarchy and followed Syrian ritual and creed.
Like the Jews of Kerala, these early Christians were granted certain rights
and property by local rulers as evidenced in three separate copperplates
struck in the late eighth century. These rights included space for a town-
ship or even “mini-kingdom” complete with church.^7 The Syrian Christians
remained relatively prosperous and peaceful through the fourteenth
century.
Circumstances changed for these Christians with the coming of the
Portuguese in the sixteenth century and the Dominicans, Franciscans, and
Jesuits patronized by the Portuguese colonialists. The low point in Catholic–
Syrian Christian relations came in 1599, when a Bishop Menezeburned
many of the books of Syrian Christians and ordered their conversion to
Catholicism.^8 Many did so, but some defected and sought to resume their
ties to Antioch. The result of these machinations was the emergence of
three separate church bodies by the seventeenth century: the Romo-Syrians,
who used a Syrian rite, maintained adherence to the pope and hence were
Catholics of the Syrian rite; “Jacobite Syrians,” who maintained their adher-
ence to the Syrian hierarchy and not to the pope; and finally, Catholics who
followed the Latin rite due largely to conversions by Portuguese-sponsored
166 Streams from the “West” and their Aftermath