Note 61 — Chapter VI

This account of the Jews on the Malabar coast is partly incomplete, and partly doubtful. We know something more certain respecting the Jews at Cochin, by M. Adrian Moens, governor and director of the Dutch East India Company on that coast, which has been published in Busching’s Magazine, vol. xiv. p. 123-154. The Jews on the Malabar coast are distinguished into two kinds, white and black. The former, in their synagogue near Cochin, have two oblong square plates of copper, containing old Malabar writing in lines that run across them, and in a mixed dialect of the Malabar, Tamulic, and Tulengic languages. The subject of this writing is a charter granted to Isup Rabbaan at Cranganor, by Erawi Wanmara emperor of Malabar, in the year from Kalijogam 3481 (that is 426 after the birth of Christ), and in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, in virtue of which he confirmed to Isup Rabbaan (Joseph Rabbi) the same privileges as had been before enjoyed by the petty Malabar viceroys. “He and the seventy-two families (related probably to each other) were to enjoy them as long as the sun should illuminate the earth; but all other Jews and their descendants were to be obedient to his commands, and to those of his successors.”—In a Portuguese book, Notisias dos Judeos de Cochim, printed at Amsterdam in 1681, it is said: In the year of the world 4130, according to the Jewish mode of computation (that is 369 years after the birth of Christ), seventy or eighty thousand Jews were landed from the kingdom of Majorca on the coast of Malabar. Now, as the Balearic islands were subdued by the Vandals exactly in the year 425 after the birth of Christ, it is probable that the Jews who were settled there removed to Jerusalem and Egypt; and being supported by their Jewish brethren, were conveyed thence by sea to India, in the year 426 of the Christian æra. Their number, however, may perhaps not have been so great. These Jews established themselves in Cranganor and the neighbouring districts, and founded a small kingdom. They purchased slaves, particularly black ones, and converted them, as well as several more of the natives, to their religion. These new converts gave rise to the black Jews, who wished to enjoy the same privileges as the white, and to unite themselves with them by intermarriages. As their claims were not allowed, they disowned the authority of the white Jews and of their king; and a war was the consequence, in which the latter were almost destroyed. They were, however, assisted by the prince of the country, and the black Jews were again reduced to obedience. After that period the black and white Jews had distinct synagogues, and lived apart from each other. Two brothers of the royal race ruled in common; but they afterwards separated, and the native princes raised a violent persecution against the Jews. They were so much oppressed by the Portuguese at Cranganor, that they were obliged, in 1565, to solicit the protection of the king of Cochin, near which city they still reside. The ancient royal race, and the descendants of those who went to India before the year 1371, are totally extinct. The white Jews, who reside near Cochin at present, went to India at later periods, from Palestine, Persia, Constantinople, Bagdad and Egypt, and even from England, Poland, Germany, Spain and Holland. The black Jews are the descendants of the ancient race above mentioned. Their books are according to the Spanish ritual, and they procure them from Amsterdam. They have nine synagogues, and consist of about 460 families, who amount perhaps to 3000 or 4000 persons. F.