Clarification of Terms

Modern State of Kerala in India was known by different names in the course of history.  In the earliest times, the people of Kerala appear to have referred to their mountainous country as Malayala, from mala+ala = mountainous cavity or burrow.  The Arab merchants who traded with the Eastern or Coromandel Coast of India referred to it as Ma’abar, (or at times Melibar) meaning ‘bridge or crossing place’, to indicate the place of crossing place between  Ceylon (Sri-Lanka) and the mainland of India, but they also applied the same term to the west-coast of southern India.  In the 15th century when the Portuguese arrived, they referred to Kerala as the Serra in reference to the high ridge of mountains visible as one approaches by sea, but they also used the term ‘Malabar’, a corruption of the Arab use of  Ma’abar.  During the British colonial period, the term Malabar was applied to the northern part of Kerala, the kingdoms of Kochi and Travancore to the south retaining their principality names.

The term ‘Malankara’ in the name Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church refers to a district in the port of Kodungalloor in Kerala, which carries particular significance to them as the place where their founder St. Thomas is thought to have landed first.  Although the Kerala Syrians are divided into several denominations at present, several of them carry the term ‘Malankara’ as part of their name.

The Christians of Kerala were originally known self-referentially and by others in Kerala as Nasṟāni-Mappilas, which designated them as a distinct religion and caste within the Keralan religious and social structure at the time.  The term ‘Syrian Christians’ came to be applied to these Christians only sporadically with the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries, and more consistently with the advent of the Dutch in 1663 in Kerala.  This was because they were seen to use Syriac as their religious and liturgical language.

The mother church in Mesopotamia was denoted by the term ‘Jacobite’, especially in apposition to the Church of the East.  This term derives from Jacob Baradaeus who revived the Syrian Church of Antioch in the the latter half of the 6th century, following its decline after the Council of Chalcedon (451).  ‘Jacobite’ was later used pejoratively by other Churches, though the Syrian Church rejects this appellation, as it considers Baradaeus as neither its founder nor its doctrinarian.  In Syriac its full name is`idto suryoyto treeysath shubho’, which in common usage is shortened to Suryoyo or Surian (=Syrian).  In Malayalam its name is Satya Suriani Sabha.  The term Orthodox in the English name ‘Syrian Orthodox Church’ is derived from the Greek term ortho-doxia, meaning ‘the straight or true path’.  Since the year 2000, this English name has been revised to ‘Syriac Orthodox Church’ in order to show its designation not as a national, but as a Universal Church.

In their earliest encounters with Europeans, the SCM referenced Antioch as the Patriarchal seat in two recorded instances: the SCM initial statement of identity to the Portuguese circa 1500 that they ‘come from the place where the followers of Christ were first called Christians’ (Buchanan 1812:70), and Joseph the Indian, in early 16th century, refers to Antioch as the source of the Apostolic Succession for the Suffragan Catholicos who ordained him (Vallavanthara 1984:233). 

In Malabar, in the 16th-18th centuries, the Portuguese referred to the SCM as Syrians or St Thomas Christians, while the SCM used to refer themselves as Nazrani Mappila and to the Church as ‘Malankara Idavaka (Diocese of Malankara) or as Malankara Suriyani Sabha’ (Syrian Church of Malankara).  During the on-going conflicts with the Anglican Church in the 19th century, the term ‘Jacobite’ began to be applied to Syrian Church, which after the second schism when the Reformed Mar Thoma Syrian Church seceded from it in 1890), became accepted as part of its name.  The present name of the Church is The Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church.  But through these changes of nomenclature, resulting from European encounters or schisms, the Church retained the core identity as ‘Syrian’, denoting religious identity, rather than a geographical or ethnic identity.

When the Syrian Church underwent a third schism in early 20th century (which is still going on), the seceding Church called itself by several names, such as ‘Indian Orthodox Church’, ‘Orthodox Syrian Church’ and ‘Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church’.  When conflict between the two factions intensified in the law courts and a clear delineation was required to distinguish the two, the term ‘Jacobite’ was affixed to the Syrian Orthodox Christians, to affirm unambiguously their position as the original Syrian Orthodox Church of Kerala, its whole-hearted and willing subordination to the Patriarch of Antioch as its Supreme Head, and its uninterrupted and inalienable ecclesiastical and doctrinal link with Antioch from 345 CE, except for the short 53-year period when it was forcibly Latinised under the Portuguese bishops.  At present, the term ‘the Jacobites’ is often used to distinguish the  Christians who have maintained this identity, from  those of  other denominations who have rejected Antiochian links at various points in its history, but who nevertheless share the same Syrian origins.