Publisher's Synopsis
The Council of Diamper (1599), imposed on India's Kerala Nazranis by the colonial power of Portugal and the imperial ecclesiastical authority of Rome, created a sea-change in the Nazrani culture forever. The Council with the forced approval of Nazrani representatives gathered at the Council created a new legal fiction, which reduced the caste status of Nazranis from Brahminhood to Christianhood, implying that the Christian republic, being devoid of the caste system, denounces the prevalent Indian practice of the discrimination of marginalized Indians according to caste distinctions.
Most importantly, to reiterate, two copper plates, the Thazhakkattupalli Plate (11th century) and the Tarisapally Plate (c. 849 CE), help us understand the Nazrani way of life as articulated by their adherence to the Law or Teaching of Apostle Thomas (Marthommmayute Margavum Vazhipatum). Later while professing their allegiance to the Persian Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (located in Iraq), they continued to adhere to their Brahmin status and continued their ethnic and linguistic ties to the Middle East by using Syriac as their liturgical language primarily on the west coast of India. However, Nazranis on the east coast adapted to the dominant culture of Brahmins and came to be known as Vadukalai, Thenkalai, and Mandayam Iyengars.
As mentioned in volume one in this series, in the first century many Nazranis left the east coast of India and settled down on the west coast along with their sovereign Chera king and continued to trade with the rising Roman power and Roman traders. However, Roman power declined with the rise of the Sassanid or Persian Empire from the third century. From this period on Nazranis came under the influence of the Persian Church almost in every aspect of their culture.Then in the fifteenth century Western Portuguese Catholic colonial power descended on Kerala and tried to convert Eastern Nazranis to become Western Catholics. This volume is about the confrontation between Western Christins and Eastern Nazranis.
