Pius Malekandathil, “A Commonwealth of Christians in the Indian Ocean: A Study on the Christians of St.Thomas Tradition in South- West India”, in Peter Kannampuzha(ed.), Early Christian Communities of the St. Thomas Tradition in India, Kochi, 2017, pp. 88-137 (original) (raw)
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Weekend Special: The Earliest Christians of India Absorbed Hindu Traditions
WordPress, 2021
The early third century Biblical text, Acts of Thomas mentions an interesting episode which is regarded as one of the strongest pieces of evidence of the first ever instance of Christianity entering Indian soil. The chapter reports that when the apostles were in Jerusalem, and divided the world among themselves the lot to go to India fell for Thomas. “I am a Hebrew man; how can I go among the Indians and preach the truth,” Thomas is believed to have told the Lord in response. However, Thomas was forced to embark upon the journey to India and found himself in the court of King Gondophares who was the founder of the Indo-Parthian kingdom in north west India, comprising parts of present day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. While scholars of religious studies consider the Acts of Thomas to be essential for the understanding of Christianity, there is very little of the text that is considered to be historical fact. It is only when the reference to King Gondophares is made that the historian is made aware of the possibility of a grain of truth in the narrative. There are a few things that can be determined historically from the story. One, that some sort of commercial activity existed between the Middle East and the Indo-Parthian kingdom of the Christian era and second, that the earliest Christians to have entered the subcontinent might have come in from here. Ironically though, the presence of the earliest Christian communities in India is found far removed from the north west of the country, down south near the Malabar coast.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA
The entire Research of this paper is based on the Historical development of Christianity in India. This chapter begin by exploring the purpose of the study on a three principle issues such as foreign incursion and their contributions, the origin of Christianity and the Influence of western views, traditional aspects, and socio-political characteristics of Indian Christianity will cover in this studies. In the second chapter, open the coming of Aryans, invasion to India by Alexander the Great, follows by various groups such as the Scythians, the Huns, the Arabians, Persians, Afghans, and East India Company has colonized India. They have also contributed to the growth of socio-political, cultural, education, and religion in India too. The arrival of Christianity has become one of the major questions in terms of origin. 1 The Apostolate of Apostle Thomas and Apostle Bartholomeus origin of Christianity to India has been discussed in this chapter. By traditional views, western views and Church father, scholars, and Apostle Thomas Christians. After considering all the evidence concluded that Apostle Thomas from 52 A.D till 72 A, D., became the Apostolate of Indian first origin. In the third chapter, the influence of Roman Catholic mission to India was a part of the universal Catholic Church under the guidance of the Pope and the curia in Rome. 2 The arrival of Portuguese in southern part of India which bring them to invite the missionary to India. And the age of monks which influence in trying to find meaning in contemplation by seeking spiritual practice in which one leaves worldly quests to fully devote one's life to spiritual life. 3 The Jesuit Mission, by Francis Xavier a missionary who joined with Ignatius
Contextualizing Christian Theology in South Asia: An Analytical Study from 1542-1947
Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 2019
Abstract: South Asian region has largely been under the influence of Indian, Chinese and Arabic cultures. All of the religious traditions have been strongly localized and tolerated various forms of folk cultures. Christianity in this region came in the early sixteenth century and flourished in the colonial era. It is normally assumed that it escaped from the process of adaptation and syncretism. However, this is not the case, as there were a number of missionaries not interested in Europeanizing their converts as in the case of Jesuits missionaries in India. Here in this article an attempt has been made to explicate the early attempt of western missionaries and local Christian to localize Christianity. To achieve this goal this paper has been divided into three sections. First section sheds light upon the overall attitude of early missionaries to the indigenous cultures and religions of India. Second section deals with the early efforts of contemporization in Indian Subcontinent. Third section will illustrate the situation church had to face after the partition of India, and how this partition impeded the process of contemporization movement. As a method, this article reviews the efforts of both native Christians and missionaries to indigenize Christianity in Indian first chronologically and then thematically. Keywords: South Asian Christianity, Indian Christianity, contextualization, Malabar controversy, Jesuits in India, religion and culture
History of Christianity in India: An Archaeo-linguistic Perspective
2022
The Apostle Thomas and his travel to the Indian Peninsula soon after the resurrection of Jesus Christ would be the key response if someone asked about the beginning of Christianity in the Indian subcontinent or the responsibility of spreading the faith in India. His journey to South India and subsequent conversion of the Namboothiri Brahmans of Kerala, followed by his martyrdom at Mylapore, near Chennai, is the most interesting and descriptive narration we would hear from any authentic church historian or believer. Though the story has many illogical twists and turns, contradicting plots, and no proper evidence, it has become a conventional history among believers and non-believers alike. Volumes of explanation and detailing have been done by many church historians, referring mainly to apocryphal, non-canonical, or hagiographic works. Though these explanations are in great volumes, their authenticity is still disputed by many renowned scholars and historians alike.
Mar Aprem, Metropolitan of India, represents the Church of the East, the historical center of which, Seleucia-Ctesiphon and later Baghdad, is in Mesopotamia. Suffering heavily today from the war in Iraq, the Church has had a glorious history, having been widely spread all over the East. During its history, the Church of the East was often persecuted, and hosts of martyrs, together with other saints of this Church, became its glorious heavenly counterpart. The history of the Church of the East in India was also complicated and full of difficulties. It is noteworthy that Dr. Mar Aprem represents that part of Indian Christianity which keeps to the faith and traditions ofthe earliest stage of the history of Indian Christianity. Hence we see a special attention being paid by the author to that period when the Christian tradition in India had not yet experienced any significant dogmatic or cultural shifts and divisions. ...
This seminar explores the claim of diverse Christian traditions in South Asia to be religious traditions of South Asia, with special attention to these traditions’ indigenisation and social interactions with majority Hindu traditions. Our study will begin with an overview of the historical development of Christianity in India from the first century CE to the present. In a second unit, we move to close readings of four major theological articulations of an indigenous South Asian Christianity: M.M. Thomas, Vandana Mataji, James Theophilus Appavoo and Wessley Lukose. Finally, our attention will turn to the concept of ritual hybridity in Christian practice and the ethnographic study of Christian communities in India. Most of our attention will be focused on Christian traditions in India, but students are encouraged to choose topics related to Christianity in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and/or Bhutan for their research papers.
As a corollary appendix to the narrative of History of Bharatam Janam, it is necessary to review the roots of Christianity in India, to start with. This account has to be extended to cover the early presence of Christian traditions in the Indian Ocean Region, what may be called the d’Extreme Orient or Greater India. In my view, a reliable, falsifiable historical narrative on the appearance of Christianity along the Indian Ocean Rim, has NOT yet appeared. Only apocryphal, hagiographic accounts disfigure the itihaasa of rim of the Indian Ocean. For a bibliography compiled by the Kerala Council for Historical Research, with reference to Pattanam Archaeology Research, see http://www.keralahistory.ac.in/pdf2014/international\_fellow\_2014.pdf The context of this open-ended enquiry are the opinionated reports and conjectures based on the ongoing archaeological digs in Pattinam, Kerala, with ardent hopes to find the remains of the mythical St. Thomas. Archaeological distortions of Pattinam digs well arguned in the media and in some journals necessitate a fresh enquiry into the historical and archaeological traditions of Christianity in Greater India. A separate area was allocated for Christians in the ancient capital Anuradhapura and there was a Christian chapel used by the Persian merchants who came to Ceylon in around 5th century. (MahavamsaTranslated by Wilhelm Geiger, Chapter 10). A hypothesis: Roots of Christian presence in India are post-modern phenomena; dated not earlier than ca. 5th century CE (and do NOT date back to mythical Thomas the Apostle, who is said to have visited Muziris in Kerala in 52 CE) since ancient Indian texts have no reference to the Christian gestalt (excepting for a Mahavamsa reference to Anuradhapura chapel).
ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY IN SOUTH INDIA: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CRITIQUES-A REVIEW
It has been a forced departure from the idea of narrating historical stages of Christianity in South India but to delve on the existing historiography on early South Indian Christianity. The rationale behind is that the writings of different authors about the emergence of Christianity in India, south India in particular has still been not accepted completely and kept as a debatable topic. Paucity of primary data in this particular field makes historians handicapped. The available historical sources comes in the way of 'tradition' are not sufficient to satisfy international community on this important socio-cultural history of India. The fact is that there are many areas in the historical past for which historians do not have sources to construct them elaborately for understanding. They fell right in the historical period for which historians supposedly have plenty of sources to understand that stages. These are the black holes exist in historical past. This could completely turn around the structure of a particular society if not a whole state when they are explored and understood. The early history of Christianity in south India cannot be put under Dark Age type either, as it has some sources (Indian tradition) and references (apocryphal writings on Indian Christianity) to build an idea. Nevertheless, array of historical writings both in missionary perspectives and historical methods on this field has been established from 3 rd century AD for the first type and from 19 th century AD for the second type. The missionary based writings are declining in postcolonial setup. Through Eric Frykenberg's self accusation of his own master narratives with post colonial and subaltern methods one can observe that shift had happened quite long before his original work on the 'Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to the Present'. Religious texts always have evangelical proselytizing trait inherited onto them. Understanding the psycho lingual nuances, embedded objectives and contexts of these texts are very difficult for even a trained historian to maintain historical objectivity let alone the common reader. This is the problem of the given topic. However, acceptance, towards historical truths will lead us to the destination of historical objectivity. Here, some writings and their subjective themes are derived in order to understand the problem.
Orientalia Christiana Cracoviensia
Ṯaufīlos Ǧōrǧ Ṣalība, the bishop of the Mountains of Lebanon diocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, in his account of a pastoral visit of the Church's current patriarch, Mar Iġnaṭiyyos Zakka I ʻĪwāṣ in India (from February, 2 to March, 24, 1982), called that Church "the Pearl of Antioch." The author was a member of the patriarchal delegation and his account was published on the 50 th anniversary of patriarch's Mar Iġnaṭiyyos Elias III Šākir's sudden death in India. 1 The fact that there is such a very small number of works in the Polish language on the beginnings of Christianity in India and its development until the 15 th century gives rise to many questions, not to mention that an average Pole is not even aware of the fact of the existence of a Christian Church in