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JULY, 1928)
THOMAS CANA
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ground along his passage pieces of finc cloth,"7 laying them on mats they had placed, thus representing the reception of Christ Our Lord at Jerusalem ; the people also threw before him their garments, and at certain places they had representations in their style; in one of them there was a little girl of six, very finely dressed and extremely pretty, and she sang one of the songs they had made in the Serra at his coming and at the celebration of the Synod, an! that with such art that she greatly delighted all the procession stopping while she sang." (Ibid., fol. 871.). "During those days, the Christians (of Angamalle] tried to give the Archbishop some recreation, as a relief to his continual occupations. They organised a dance, in which only the men participated; they began at 8 o'clock in the evening and finished at 1 o'clock after midnight. What was noted in this was the modesty of the Christians in these dances, which they always begin by making first, all who aro present, the sign of the Cross; after that, the dancers sing the prayer of the Our Father, and a livmn to St. Thomas 88 There is not a profane song in it, nor anything resembling licentiousness; all the songs are about ancient histories of their ancestors, or about the Churches, or about the Saints. (Ibid., fol. 87v).
At Kuravalangad: "When he arrived, the whole people was waiting for him with much alacrity a good space from the Church, whither they took him, all bearing branches in their hands, amidst many dances, fcastings, and diverse kinds of music after their manner." (Ibid., fol. 109 r.)
On February 7, 1924, at the Sacred Heart Hill, Kottayam, I witnessed some of the very dances and listened to some of the very songs which 325 years carlier had delighted do Menezes and his numerous party. Some of these songs are in the collection now presented. It was 8 p.m. A party of men, Southists, armed with bucklers of rhinoceros hide and swords, came to take their Bishop and his party from the Priests' House on the top of the Hill and conducted us amid a display of their fencing to the new school-hall, where a crowd had as. sembled to witness the lemosha of dances. Around a big brass lamp with 12 wicks, in honour of the Apostles, antique piece of furniture, a twelve petalled lotus, the dances went on in end. less variety for two hours with clapping of hands, gesticulations, prostrations; all the time the men sang, resting only for a change of tuno; they recounted in verse the birth of Christ Our Lord, the adoration of the Magi, Christ's Life and Passion ; St. Thomas' coming to Malabar and his death at Chinna Malai (Little Mount, Mylapore), Thomas Cana's leaving Mesopotamia with his party of colonists, the farewell on the sea-shore and the recommendation to bear in mind the Ten and the Seven, the meeting between Thomas Cana and the Peruma! of Malabar, the privileges granted on the occasion, eta They might have continued till 1 o'clock after midnight. But, alas, these songs and dances are now going out of fashion. The Bishop himself had not seen them or heard them for forty years past. They took place nowadays almost in secret at the marriage-feasts. All this was not now sufficiently Western, and what is Western is all the vogue, in spite of so much clamouring about: East is East, and West is West. The Northists look down on these displays with contempt, as relics of a bygone age. They are just good enough for the Southists. Even among the Southists the tradition of the songs and dances survives only with the poorer sort ; few among them now know the songs by heart, though most of them are in print. Oh,how I wished that night to see the wholo of that band of exccutants, some twenty lusty men, carried across the Red Sea to Rome, to the Missions Exhibition at the Vatican (1925)! How it would have brought home to Christian Europe the primitive soul of an ancient Christian people, the Indian children of St. Thomas the Apostle! Alas! it was not to be. The Southists are a poor community, compared with the Northists, and the Northists laughed at the notion till the Southists lost heart. What would have been a triumph for the Southists was represented as folly, which would expose to mockery and ridicule all the St. Thomas Christians. Such is this pleasant, pushing, retrograde world of ours.
07 Spreading cloth on the road for the bishops to walk along is one of the seventy-two privileges granted to the Syrian Christians is the overlord of Malabar (Chéraman Peruma!). The privilege is exercised even to.day.-T.KJ.
88 This hymn to St. Thomas sung in 1599 must be different from the extant hymn of 1732, called Margam Kali Song, The St. Thomas hymn of Menezes' days also has to be discovered. T.K.J.
