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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1928
Lines. 43-44, 49-50. These lines show that (before Thomas' arrival) there were Christians in India. Those who visited Mar Joseph, bowed to him and received his blessing were St. Thomas Christians already settled in Malabar. The other parts of the songs make this abundantly clear.
The points of Thomas Cana's story in Land's Anecdota Syriaca and other accounts which the songs translated thus far do not yet bear out, are the following: the dream of the bishop of Edessa, the meeting of bishops, monks and merchants convened by the Catholicos or Patriarch, at which Thomas Cana decided to go to Malabar and examine into the position of the Christians there (IV. 9-14 speaks of a meeting convoked after Thomas' visit to India). All the other details are sufficiently accounted for in our songs, and many are set forth by the poot with remarkablo vividness, copiousness and realism. There is an archaic touch about the situations from which one might surmise that our songs are modernised versions of more ancient poems. [To me they are not earlier than the Portuguese period. -T. K. J.)
We may note a certain unity in these songs. In II. 3, 4 we hear of 72 king's sons and 400 persons; in III. 10, of 72 families of 7 clans; in IV. 15-17, of 72 families composed of 400 persons. In V. 30-32, Mar Joseph of Urfa, 4 priests and many deacons are mentioned ; in IV. 16, a bishop, priests and deacons.
The antiquity of Malabar Christian songs can be guessed from what we read in Maffei (ante 1588) of the poems in honour of St. Thomas which the Christian children in Malabar used to sing.
One of the interesting features of the visitation of the churches, by Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes after the Council of Diamper (1599) was the songs and the dances executed by groups of men. "Before entering any Church or settlement, he [de Menezes] sent word beforehand, whereupon the Christians prepared to receive him according to the means of the population, each trying to receive him as best they could. Thus, on his arrival, all the Christians came presently to receive him at the place where he stopped with his boats), and to take him thence to the Church. All knelt down with much reverence and kissed his hands according to their custom. Next they organised the procession in which they con. ducted him. In it were all the men of the place, and, while it proceeded, they introduced into it many dances and various kinds of music and of instruments of the country, and they kept singing and dancing. And, as the Malavares are much accustomed to put into songs all tho things which happen, immediately after the Synod they made in the Serra a very long hymn after their fashion, which contained the life of the Archbishop, and the trouble they had given him before the Synod, and what was done in it, with the other things which happened; miracles, as they called them. In it they confessed low, before the coming of the Archbishop, they were deceived by the Dishops of Babylonia, and there were many praises of Rome, and of the Supreme Roman Pontiff, who had remembered them and sent the Archbishop to instruct them. They sang this canticle in most of the Churches (fol. 73v) at the feasts of reception, chiefly the little children, who always went about the streets singing Others fenced, and at intervals they executed their lessons in fencing tricks, which for them is a great feast, the streets were adorned with branches of palm-trees, areca-trees and other trees; the women were at the doors and windows watching with great pleasure, and the Caçanares sang the psalms in Caldean until they reached the Church." (Gouvea, Jornada, 1606, fols. 73r-73v).
At Angamalle: "He was received with great festivities and much enthusiasm by the entire people. They had decorated with branches all the roads by which he had to pass, and from the place where the procession began up to the Church they kept throwing on the
NG A copy of this song will be discovered by some means anri puhliched.-T.K.J.
