The Ark

The 10 million Christians in Kerala, South India, believe their faith was brought by St Thomas, 20 years after Jesus' death.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Today, the state of Kerala is known for its large stone crosses, which Professor Ken Parry of Macquarie University, has studied along with similar ones in South China.

THEME

Rachael Kohn: St Thomas is remembered for being the doubting apostle, but in India, where he's said to have travelled, he's venerated as the founder of a major Christian community.

Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn, and on today's Ark, we get a little closer to finding out if that's legend or reality.

Ken Parry has a special interest in the earliest Christian communities in Asia. He's travelled to South China to read gravestones and now to South India to photograph the stone crosses of Kerala.

As a key stop on the ancient Spice Route, the State of Kerala attracted many Christians over the centuries. I spoke to Ken Parry as he was mounting a photographic exhibition of the crosses at the Macquarie University Library.

Well with 10-million Christians in Kerala, there must be a lot of crosses there. Where are these crosses from?

Ken Parry: Most of them have come from the central part of Kerala, around Kottayam, and when I visited there last year, last October, I was taken around by several priests from the local Syrian churches to see the crosses around that particular area. So those are the crosses that we're seeing in the exhibition at the moment.

Rachael Kohn: Well St Thomas is said to have gone to India about 20 years after Jesus' death, and he was meant to be spreading the Gospel there for about 20 years. How much credibility do you think that tradition has?

Ken Parry: I don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility, that certainly Christians during the 1st century could have gone to India.

The earliest sort of indication, particularly related to the acts of Thomas are from the 3rd century, but certainly by the 4th and 5th centuries we begin to have independent witnesses to Christians in India, quite where in India is a debatable point, whether it's the north or the south. But of course the St Thomas Christians of South India would say very much that it's South India that St Thomas visited, yes.

Rachael Kohn: When do the earliest crosses that you're looking at date from?

Ken Parry: We think that they date from about the 8th and 9th centuries AD, because of their inscriptions. Some of them have inscriptions in Middle Iranian letters, in Pahlavi, and we know that the particular style of lettering dates from that sort of period, 8th and 9th centuries, and we also have some with Syriac inscriptions with various quotations, and that style of writing and lettering is also dated to that sort of period.

So maybe the earliest crosses are from about the 8th and 9th centuries.

Rachael Kohn: Well let's look at these crosses. You've got marvellous photographs of them. Where are they typically situated?

Ken Parry: There are two places, and there are basically two types of crosses.

We have very large, freestanding crosses which are found outside the churches, usually to the west end of the church, and these are used, particularly on festival days and during processional days when people will come out of the church and process around these crosses, and these very large, freestanding crosses, is where they burn coconut oil as an act of offering and reverence, at the base of these large crosses on their pedestals.

And then the second type of cross is this older cross that we've been mentioning, the so-called Persian cross, and these are usually found located inside the churches, because they're considered to be old, and they're venerated by St Thomas Christians, and they've been brought into the churches, and people come into the church and venerate these smaller altar crosses in the church themselves.

Rachael Kohn: Now the ones that you show here seem to be carved on palettes of stone, they almost look like they'd be headstones. Do you know where they came from?

Ken Parry: Well we can't be absolutely sure that maybe some of them weren't used as headstones, as tombstones, that's quite right.

It's quite clear I think that many of these older crosses have been brought from different places, and placed inside the churches. So it's very difficult to know what their original location was, and their original intention and usefulness. But it's not beyond the bounds of possibility, except for those which have inscriptions which seem to indicate that they've been dedicated as offerings to a church or a particular Christian community.

Rachael Kohn: Let's look at the way these crosses appear. They certainly aren't your typical crucifix. They're much more decorative.

Ken Parry: Yes, and it isn't the crucifix, that is, it isn't a cross with Christ shown dead or alive on the cross, these are plain crosses, and in Eastern Christianity and Syrian Christianity in particular, it's the plain cross, as the symbol of the triumph of Christ's life over death, that's the focal point of interest and the symbolism.

But what is interesting about the older crosses in particular, is that they're called Leaved Crosses, or Persian crosses, because they symbolise at the bottom a set of leaves, which usually flow upwards either side of the base of the cross, which symbolises the cross as the tree of life. But what is interesting about some of these crosses from Kerala is that the leaves actually are downward pointing, which is not a tradition we find in the Middle East, or even in Byzantine art.

Rachael Kohn: Well in contrast to those smaller carved crosses in the churches, we have these giant crosses sitting atop plinths, which are pretty decorative.

Ken Parry: Yes. What's very interesting from my point of view, being interested in the iconography, is that the plinths represent lotus petals and lotus flowers, so what we find is the cross sitting on top of a lotus flower, and then there is a square base, so it's a circle on a square with a cross on top. The circle as the lotus flower represents the divine, heavenly aspect, on the square which represents the earth.

So it's very interesting from my point of view to see the cross on a lotus flower, because this is what we've been looking at in China, because during the Mongol period in the 13th and 14th centuries, we've been investigating some tombstones from South China, and there we also find the cross on the lotus flower. So it's very interesting from our point of view to see this same tradition in South India.

Rachael Kohn: Would you be drawing a connection between those communities, or just a tendency to assimilate local motifs into a Christian expression?

Ken Parry: We don't have an inscription for example from South China, which would cement the relationship between the two, but we've got plenty of evidence for trade connections between South India and South China, particularly in this period in the 13th and 14th centuries.

And we know for example that there was a Hindu community in a city in south China where we're working, and that particular Hindu community came from Tamil Nadu, and there is an inscription in Tamil in South China, and it would be wonderful if we could find an inscription connecting our Syrian Christian communities in both South China and South India, but we don't have that. But the possibility certainly exists of a connection, yes.

Rachael Kohn: There are more than lotus petals on these plinths; there are other wonderful decorations; can you talk about what else one would see as one approaches these crosses?

Ken Parry: Yes, we have a variety of iconographic motifs, we have fish, we have various animals, but very interestingly we have elephants, very much part of an Indian context, and we have a very nice archway in one of the older churches which shows two elephants either side of the cross on a plinth.

Obviously the elephants coming to venerate the cross. And on the other side of the archway, we have two peacocks either side of the cross. It's very interesting to see that indigenisation of the cross, and Christian symbols in India.

Rachael Kohn: Any depictions of the holy family?

Ken Parry: On one of the plinths we do have what looks, although it's rather defaced, an image of Mary and the Christ Child, and we have one also of the Crucifixion.

What is very difficult to determine about all this material from South India is how much of it is pre-Portuguese, and how much is it from the Portuguese and later. That is from the 16th century onwards, when the Portuguese came to South India and tried to Latinise the local Christian tradition. They also tried to stamp out the use of Syriac in the liturgy, and there was quite a burning of books, of the old liturgical books, in South India when the Portuguese came, because they tried to impose very strongly the Western Latin Catholic tradition.

So some of the iconographic motifs could be from the Portuguese period, and that's why it's very difficult which things could be pre-Portuguese. We do have a reference from a Franciscan who visited this area in the early 14th century, and he records in his travel record that he erected a stone cross in South India on his visit, and he anointed it with oil. Is he beginning this tradition of high crosses and burning oil, or is it already a tradition in India that he's simply following? We don't know at this stage.

Rachael Kohn: Now one would expect on a cross to see inscriptions from the gospels; do you find that?

Ken Parry: We do, we have at least two inscriptions written in Syriac, dating them probably to this early period of the 8th and 9th centuries, and on one of them we have a Syriac inscription and it comes from Galatians 6:14, and it says that, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I am unto the world. And this inscription, obviously at the base of the cross, signifies how important the cross has been to St Thomas Christians in South India.

Rachael Kohn: I would imagine with the annual pilgrimage to the St Thomas shrine that these crosses would really be a very great focal point for St Thomas Christians.

Ken Parry: Yes. I mean I've only visited so far to Kerala, where we find these crosses, but the reputed tomb of St Thomas, which is at Chennai, the name for Madras, they have a very extensive day of festivals on the saint's day of St Thomas there, and there is an old cross there which is dated again to this early period that I'm talking about.

So yes, when you go on pilgrimage to the tomb of St Thomas, there is a great festival, and one of the wonderful things about experiencing Christianity in South India is it's very colourful, and it's very noisy, and everybody's obviously having a great time, and seeing that is a very vibrant place to witness Christianity today.

Rachael Kohn: Well I noticed your pictures of the interior of churches didn't show any pews.

Ken Parry: Yes, it's very interesting. The tradition in India is like the Indian tradition generally is that everybody sits on the floor, and that is still the case today, so when the services are happening in the church, most of the time when people don't need to stand, then they squat or sit on the floor. And it's very interesting because we have in fact an early 5th century reference by a Byzantine historian, and he seems to know as well that these Christians in India don't stand up when they should do during the service.

So it's obviously a very ancient tradition of using the floor to sit on when the services are taking place, and that's still the case today.

Rachael Kohn: Finally Ken, are these churches in any danger of being replaced by modern ones?

Ken Parry: Yes, indeed. I think this is one of the great problems of going to South India and trying to make some sort of archaeological survey, or iconographic survey of the material, because so much has been lost over the centuries for different reasons.

But today in South India, when you need to expand your congregation and to build a new church, the tendency is to the tendency is to knock down the old one and build a spanking new one, which looks lovely and it's beautifully painted and decorated, but it means that we lose all trace of the original or earlier buildings.

So it's very difficult to make surveys from an archaeological and historical point of view, and I think one of the things that needs to be done is to try and involve UNESCO in making proper surveys of the churches and crosses in South India, because otherwise I think for a future generation we're going to have less and less of this material, because Kerala is a fast-expanding State. It's the richest State in India, and it also has the highest literacy rate in India, so it is a place with international connections, where things are developing very fast, and I think the local, particularly the local priests there are very much aware that they have to do something in terms of preserving the ancient monuments of South India for future generations, yes.

Rachael Kohn: A great place to visit on St Thomas' Saint's Day. Ken Parry's photographs of the stone crosses of Kerala are on display at the Macquarie University Library in Sydney till December 10th.

And by the way, St Thomas' body was removed from India to the Greek island of Patmos, where his skull is on display.

Next week, the curious tale of a troupe of Aborigines from Townsville, who travelled the world in the 1860s, as a circus act. That's next week on The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.

THEME

Guests

Dr Ken Parry
is in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney. He is the photographer and curator of the exhibition The Stone Crosses of Kerala in South India showing at the university until 10 December 2004.

Further Information

The Stone Crosses of Kerala in South India - Exhibition
Curated by Dr Ken Parry, the exhibition can be seen on the Ground Floor exhibition space at the Macquarie University Library from 3 November to 10 December 2004.
http://www.pr.mq.edu.au/events/index.asp?ItemID=1705