Surveying and Digitising Manuscript Collections of the Indian Syrian Christians: Foundations for a Syrian Church History in South India
Final Report Abstract
Even before our project started, the Kerala ecclesiastic collections had acquired the reputation of preserving valuable copies of well-known Syriac texts whose originals had become of difficult if not of impossible access because of the tensions and unsafe conditions that are reigning in West Asia. The value of the Syriac archives as a source for the history of the Indian Syrian Christian community had been virtually unknown. During the DFG project and its continuation funded by Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, Collegeville, Minnesota, our team has got access altogether to 61 larger and smaller manuscript collections in Kerala, containing manuscripts written in Classical Syriac (an Aramaic language that was used as the main literary language of Asian Christians), Neo-Aramaic, Malayalam (a Dravidian language spoken in Kerala), Tamil, Latin, Portugues and English. We were able to secure access to some of the largest and most imponant collections known in Kerala, such as the Nestorian collection in Thrissur, the collection of the Ernakualam-Angamaly Archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, that of Saint Joseph's Monastery in Mannanam, that of the Trivandrum Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Church, that of the Monastery of Manjinikkara of the Syrian Orthodox Church. The collected material amounts to 347,293 files, corresponding to 228,895 manuscript pages, occupying 5,260 TB memory. Among the digitised material there are 1176 Syriac manuscripts, 67 Malayalam paper manuscripts, tens of thousands of palm-leaf documents arranged in 629 bundles, 29 Malayalam literary palm-leaf documents and thousands of archival documents shedding light on the history, the poiltical relations and the daily life of the communities. This immense new material gathered - the date of the manuscripts ranging from 1290 to the present - constitutes a major breakthrough 1) in the study of the history and of the culture of the Indian Syrian Christians; 2) in that of the relationship of the Indian Christians to Oriental Christianity in general and 3) in that of the western (Portuguese, Dutch, British) colonial and missionary history. Moreover, 4) our material opens new perspectives for a much-discussed colonial and post-colonial problem, namely the question whether the "Indians" had ever had a historical consciousness, or had been engulfed in a mythical world view; also, 5) it provides a basis for an unprecedented socio-economic study of the Christian churches and village communities in Kerala. Finally, 6) we are pioneering in the study o f a hitherto almost entirely unknown literature, that written in Garshuni Malayalam. an old script for writing Malayalam exclusively used by the Christians, based on the Syriac alphabet and antedating the presently used Malayalam alphabet. The new picture emerging about the Kerala Syrian Christian communities is that of an Indian caste (even two endogamous castes) equally belonging to their local Indian community and to their fellow Syrian Christians in West Asia, to whom they were strongly connected through the trans-Arabian-Sea trade. It was into this framework that the Portuguese and the subsequeni colonisers stepped in. They were first enthusiastically received by the Indian Christians and, from this interaction, an incipient new syncretistic Euro-Indian culture began to take shape. However, this culture, flourishing in the sixteenth century was destroyed by the aggressive behaviour of the Europeans and the subsequent history was that of a passive resisiance and of the creation of new secret and open contacts with the West Asian mother Churches. The preservation of the archives as a gauge of Syrian Christian identity in India was part of this resistance and fight for survival. The work of our team was thoroughly followed by the Indian media. Several articles were published in English and in Malayalam, in The Hindu, Malayala Manorama, Matrubrhumi etc. Indian government circles are helpful and sympathetic to the endeavour, which has triggered an entire archives preservation movement in Kerala. We are planning lo continue the work in similar structure for the exploration of other Indian state and community archives.
Publications
- The Nomocanon of Metropolitan Abdisho of Nisibis: A Facsimile Editono of MS 64 from the Collection of the Church of the East in Thrissur. Second, revised edition, ed. Istvan Perczel, introduction by Hubert Kaufhold, foreword by Mar Aprem - photos in colour /Syriac Manuscripts from Malabar; 1/ (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Scriptorium. 2009), xlvi+429 pp. Substantially revised second ed. of the first volume
Istvan Perczel
- The Nomocanon of Metropolitan Abdisho of Nisihis: A Facsimile Edition of MS 64 from the Collection of the Church of the East in Thrissur, with a new Introduction by Hubert Kaufhold, transl. I. Perczel. XXIII + 426 pages, plus CD with the original digital photos of the MS /Syriac Manuscripts from Malabar; 1/ (Piscataway, NJ; Gorgias Press. 2005), ISBN 1- 59333-133-9 (English and Syriac).
Istvan Perczel
