Anquetil Du Perron gives in French the
contents of the engravings on copper plaques or “olles” of a series of local
privileges concerning taxes, land rights, rights to purchase and sell, rights
to ride on elephants, the Christian church’s right to punish those it considered
guilty, granted around 800 AD, by Scharan Peroumal or Ayyan Atikal, the
Travancore Raja who resided at Cranganor [Kodungalloor], and written down by
“the second king Tama”, in part at the temple of Vaikom [south west of Cochin
on the road to Kottayam], and in part at the palace of Iringalakkuda [close to
Kodungalloor, north of Cochin].
According to Anquetil, these privileges granted by the Kodungalloor Raja
were received in writing by an Armenian merchant (of the Syrian Christian
Church), named Thomas Knaye around 800 AD, to the sound of drums, trumpets and gunshots. Although the authenticity of the text of
these privileges is not quite certain,
it is what Anquetil claims was communicated to him by the Syrian
Christian clergy of the Cochin area in January 1758. [Voyage en Inde,
(1771), 1997, p.222-225.].
No comments:
Post a Comment