Project for Preserving the Manuscripts of the Syrian Christians in India

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In the picture above: Ms Ernakulam MAP Palmleaf 1, f. 57r, the first page of a newly found text of the Malayalam Acts of Thomas. The manuscript contains eighteen Christian apocryphal texts edited and arranged according to latinising tendencies by a late seventeenth-century Roman Catholic redactor. On the left side the title: Mar Thoma Shliha, that is, “Saint Thomas the Apostle.”

The text begins with the following words: “On Mar Thoma the Apostle. On the 21st of the month of Dhanu (December) the commemoration (Dukhrana) of Saint Mar Thoma the Apostle is celebrated. In our Malankara Church diocesis the 21st of the month of Dhanu is his death date. On 3 Karkadakam (July) his disciples took his holy dead body to his country. The people from the city of the Romans understood that Saint Mar Thoma the Apostle lived before Mar Addai and here is written regarding Mar Thoma the Apostle’s acts and miracles.”
 
This collection is situated in the House of the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church. This palace was built in 1896, some nine years after the Syro-Malabar Church gained independence from the Latin Archbishopric of Verapoly (Varapuzha), which was under the immediate jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. This development was the result of many years of striving for autonomy, also connected to the struggle to maintain a Chaldean jurisdiction. Finally, the autonomy was granted, while the Chaldean jurisdiction was denied. All this is well reflected in the constitution of the collection, kept in exemplary order by its present archivist, Fr. Ignatius Payyappilly (in the picture above). On our previous visit in 2002 the collection contained 38 Syriac manuscripts. In the meantime the archivist, Fr. Ignatius Payyappilly, succeeded in obtaining 8 additional Syriac manuscripts, so that the number of the Syriac manuscripts amounts to 46. Among these one finds a copy of the East Syriac Nomocanon by Abdisho of Soba, copied in 1563 explicitly for Mar Abraham, the last Chaldean Metropolitan of the Malabar Church, the personal Pentateuch - written in East Syriac characters - of the great Syrian Orthodox prelate, Mar Thoma VI (Mor Dionysius I, the Great: 1765-1809) and many Chaldean books, including ones copied in Iraq in the time of Patriarch Mar Joseph Audo VI, showing the strong Chaldean tendencies of the Catholic Saint Thomas Christians before and shortly after the Foundation of the Syro-Malabar Church. The collection also contains several manuscripts written by the hand of Mar Louis Pazhaparampil, the first bishop of the Syro-Malabar Church. It also contains a copper plate document in Vattezhuttu (“Round script”) script, the one used between the twelfth and the early nineteenth century for inscriptions and legal documents. This one registers an eighteenth-century land donation to a church. There are a number of palm leaves written in Malayalam, documenting legal and economic issues connected to the churches, palm-leaf manuscripts in Sanskrit and a Christian Tamil paper manuscript, perhaps from the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most interesting document of the entire collection is a palm-leaf manuscript containing eighteen Christian apocrypha written in Malayalam, among others the Acts of Thomas. The manuscript was written in the nineteenth century, while it contains a compilation of texts made in the seventeenth century, the age of the texts themselves being unclear.

The existence of the collection was known, but there has been no previous checklist. Between August 2005 and March 2006 our team has digitised the 46 Syriac manuscripts, the Tamil manuscript and the palm-leaf MS with the Christian apocrypha.
 
The hitherto most important catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in Kerala was published by J.P.M. van der Ploeg, OP [1]. Our project began with the estimate, established in 2002, according to which we may expect to find over 1,000 heavily endangered Syriac manuscripts in Kerala [2]. Our latest fieldwork, conducted without interruption betweem January 2005 and May 2006, during which approximately 400 MSS were digitised, has also shown that we have to deal with several thousand Syriac manuscripts, mainly contained in collections hitherto unknown both in the West and in India. Before our work began, altogether 18 collections were known, out of which at least 3 no longer exist; our present list, subject to continuous update, contains 69 collections. The collections are mixed; they contain Syriac, Malayalam and pre-Malayalam material, the whole belonging together. The manuscripts are written on paper or palm leaves. Besides manuscripts proper, we also have a rich collection of archival material in Syriac: documents pertaining to the relations of the Syrian Christians of India with their mother Churches in the Middle East, such as letters sent to and fro, official documents issued by Middle Eastern hierarchs, etc. Some of these are available in the original, others in copies, often in letter books. This documentation begins in the early seventeenth century and ends in the twentieth century. The manuscripts proper often contain new texts, unknown from elsewhere. This material, once collected and processed, will permit us to write the hitherto unknown history of indigenous Christianity in southern India. Here we briefly present some of the collections the material of which we have partly or entirely digitised. The number of the collections presented will increase in the days to come. Later this website will also host the catalogues of these collections. If you have anything to add or correct, please write to us at srite@srite.de.
 
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...387483948_1081881861_2607005_1640914174_n.jpg

In Persian, Copied by Mas ud ibn Ibrahim, 1312(acquired by the Chaldean metropolitan Mar Yosef, who came from Malabar to Rome in 1568 to clear himself of the charge of Nestorianism)

This, the first Persian manuscript to enter the Vatican Library, may well have been acquired by the Chaldean metropolitan Mar Yosef, who came from Malabar to Rome in 1568 to clear himself of the charge of Nestorianism. Written in the cursive “naskhi” script typical of the Middle East, it is one of the earliest surviving Persian manuscripts of any part of the Scriptures–none are known to be earlier than the fourteenth century. The rarity of the manuscript was quickly appreciated. The Persian scholar Giovanni Battista Vecchietti consulted it when he was in Rome in 1598 and foliated it. It was also read and copied by Tumagen, an Armenian from Aleppo who probably arrived in Rome in the train of Leonardo Abel after his mission to Syria in 1586. The page displayed here includes the opening of the text of the Gospel of Matthew.
 
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