Why Did Indian Christians Look Towards Persia?

A local church with a distant connection

A book copied in an Indian church could name a distant patriarch without ceasing to be an Indian book. A Syriac manuscript completed in 1300 or 1301 places the church of Mar Quriaqos at Shingala, usually identified with Cranganore, within a wider ecclesiastical world. Its colophon names both the local metropolitan and the catholicos. Françoise Briquel Chatonnet’s examination lets us see local Christian work and a relationship beyond India in the same record. ¹

That relationship raises a question worth asking carefully. Why did Christians rooted in southern India receive bishops and religious books through Persia and Mesopotamia? For many believers, belonging to a worldwide fellowship and caring for a particular community were compatible commitments. Mahmood Kooria’s discussion of Malabar’s archives also reminds us that a document written in another language may preserve a local voice. Syriac cannot simply be filed away as foreign testimony. ²

Nor does Persian Christianity describe one ethnicity. Christopher Buck distinguishes geographical, political and ecclesiastical uses of that expression. A church connected with the Persian realm could include people of different languages and backgrounds. Calling its Indian members Persian Christians therefore requires explanation: it may describe their ecclesiastical connection without describing their ancestry, everyday speech or political allegiance. ³

Ephesians offers a Christian measure for such relationships: “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” The immediate concern is reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles through Christ. The verse does not prescribe a medieval system of appointing bishops. It does establish that no region owns a superior entrance into God’s presence. This history becomes fruitful when we hold its particular evidence alongside that common access. ⁴

A connection older than its later labels

In the sixth century, Cosmas reported a church in the pepper producing country called Male and a bishop at Calliana appointed from Persia. His account combines things seen and heard, and it does not give a complete administration chart. Still, the particular reference to an overseas appointment is substantial evidence of an ecclesiastical connection. It does not establish that every Christian living in India was a visiting Persian merchant. ⁵

The Church of the East also had a history before the career of Nestorius. Sebastian Brock explains why the conventional label Nestorian can mislead when it becomes an account of the church’s origin. Communities outside the Roman Empire did not begin simply as a party expelled from a Roman controversy. Their institutions and theological language developed in circumstances that deserve attention in their own right. ⁶

Those circumstances differed from Christian imperial establishment. Brock’s study of divided loyalties describes Christians living under a Sasanian state whose official religion was Zoroastrian. Richard Payne complicates the picture further: subordination, negotiated inclusion and periods of violence belonged to this history. An uninterrupted story of persecution misses the conditions under which Christian institutions also grew. Overseas fellowship need not have meant dependence on a Christian empire. ^{7, 8}

Later histories require the same care. Philip Wood shows how the Chronicle of Seert preserves earlier material while arranging Christian history around patriarchal leadership. David Wilmshurst observes that regional foundation traditions could also express loyalties that complicated claims from the centre. A history organized around the patriarch is evidence about authority and memory; it is not automatically a photograph of every community’s daily experience. ^{9, 10}

What a patriarch’s complaint can reveal

The seventh century letters of Ishoʿyahb III bring India into a dispute involving the metropolitan of Fars. The patriarch accuses him of obstructing canonical ordination and withholding spiritual gifts while seeking material tribute from India. Marijke Metselaar Jongens reads these statements within the writer’s attempt to secure obedience. They show responsibilities being argued over, rather than a system working smoothly and without resistance. ¹¹

Michael Penn explains why such letters have been made to bear too much weight in competing accounts of early Muslim rule. A rebuke addressed to a subordinate bishop has an immediate purpose. Its rhetoric cannot safely become a description of what every Christian everywhere was experiencing. Hearing the complaint seriously includes asking what the patriarch wanted its recipient to do. ¹²

Iskandar Bcheiry’s study makes the contest over participation more concrete. In the related Gulf dispute, the patriarch addressed lay believers and urged them to choose and send candidates for episcopal appointment. This is evidence from Beth Qatraye, not a record of an Indian election. It nevertheless shows that the wider ecclesiastical world included local believers making decisions, refusing cooperation and being appealed to directly. ¹³

The council held under George I in 676 likewise combined episcopal authority with community participation. Its prescriptions called for local clergy and believers to identify a suitable bishop, and for trustworthy people to administer church property. These are rules from a Gulf council, not proof of their enforcement in India. They do show that acknowledging a bishop did not necessarily place every task in his hands. ¹⁴

Payne’s study of East Syrian law adds another limit to the picture. In Fars and Mesopotamia, bishops sought authority among other available legal practices and local elites. Their regulations reveal ambitions as well as arrangements already established. The comparison cautions us against assuming that a patriarch’s broad title or a forceful decree demonstrates complete practical control across a distant sea. ¹⁵

Even sympathetic Christian histories could acknowledge the strain. Thomas of Marga’s ninth century account describes Timothy’s bargaining over appointments and local notables resisting a metropolitan chosen without their participation. Thomas interprets the events through his own religious loyalties. We need not endorse those judgments to recognize that his account remembers argument and ambition within ecclesiastical leadership. A venerable institution did not make every action of its leaders exemplary. ¹⁶

Resources that travelled with people

Timothy’s own correspondence also needs its setting restored. His reference to monks crossing seas towards India and China occurs in an admonition about clerical conduct and expenses. It is not a travel diary or a census of missionaries. The passage does, however, show how journeys across great distances could enter an argument about the responsibilities expected of Christian ministers. ¹⁷

Frederick Norris’s study of Timothy emphasizes intellectual preparation, languages and engagement across Christian boundaries. The resources carried through these networks included trained readers and teachers, not only official appointments. A community seeking help could be seeking people able to read Scripture, teach doctrine and sustain worship. That possibility deserves consideration alongside the political interests visible in the same sources. ¹⁸

Training itself had a particular character. Adam Izdebski’s examination of the School of Nisibis describes scriptural study joined to moral formation and common life. Calling it an ancient version of a modern university obscures that purpose. Knowledge was expected to shape conduct within a community. The comparison helps us imagine the kind of formation valued in this wider Christian world without assuming every Indian priest attended that school. ¹⁹

Steve Cochrane adds a useful restraint. Rules concerning prayer, reading, work and community discipline do not by themselves document a special curriculum for overseas mission. They show habits intended to sustain Christian life. We should distinguish those spiritual resources from claims that a particular school trained a particular traveller when no surviving record makes the connection. ²⁰

Indian Christians asked and chose

The account translated by Alphonse Mingana describes Indian Christian envoys travelling to seek bishops. It gives them names, describes the ordination of Indian priests, and recounts the reception of returning clergy and further communication with the patriarch. The associated letter of 1504 reports on communities and events in India. These texts allow Indian Christians to appear as people pursuing a relationship, rather than simply waiting to be administered. ²¹

Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar Winkler draw attention to an especially telling feature: the Indian delegation participated in selecting monks to become bishops. Receiving an overseas bishop and exercising local initiative could belong to the same process. Such participation does not make the relationship equal in every respect, but it resists a picture in which all consequential choices were made abroad. ²²

Even this relatively detailed episode has a chronological difficulty. Heleen Murre van den Berg notes that the often repeated date of 1490 conflicts with evidence about the patriarch then in office. She proposes 1499 or 1500 as a correction. The proposal should remain a proposal. We can recognize the delegation’s role while admitting that the precise year is less secure than repeated summaries sometimes suggest. ²³

Local leadership also remained substantial. Mateusz Potoczny describes the importance of the archdeacon and communal structures within Indian Christian identity. Clara Joseph’s examination of the archdeacon’s authority shows why the presence of an overseas bishop cannot simply be equated with absence of Indian governance. The powers described in later evidence should not all be projected into the earliest centuries, but they are indispensable to understanding the relationship. ^{24, 25}

A received language could become an Indian resource

Language gives another reason to avoid simple categories. Przemysław Turek compares hymn material in Malayalam translation with Syriac represented in Malayalam characters. Translation, language and writing system are different things. These later examples show Christians handling inherited material through local linguistic resources. The continued presence of a received tradition did not mean that Indian readers and worshippers had no part in its reception. ²⁶

Garshuni Malayalam makes the distinction tangible. It uses a writing system based on Syriac to express Malayalam, with additional signs for local sounds. István Perczel’s manuscript study supports its use by the late sixteenth century while questioning attempts to assign it a much earlier date without evidence. A Syriac looking page may therefore carry an Indian language. Its appearance alone cannot settle who composed it or what they were saying. ²⁷

Perczel’s earlier survey of manuscript collections also identifies Syriac hymns by Alexander the Indian, a seventeenth century Christian writer. Here the received language became a medium for local composition. This is later evidence, and cannot establish the literary practices of the sixth century. It does refute the assumption that using Syriac necessarily meant repeating only what someone overseas had created. ²⁸

The earlier evidence remains more limited. In The Syriac World, Perczel distinguishes Middle Persian teaching texts sent towards India from proof that the entire liturgy was conducted in Middle Persian. The distinction matters: translated sermons and hymns can help explain worship without replacing every prayer. A report about books is not a complete record of what every congregation spoke. ²⁹

Nor did Syriac always identify the same ecclesiastical allegiance. Radu Mustață’s analysis of a sermon from early seventeenth century Malabar shows Catholic missionary writing in Syriac. Lucy Parker’s study of the preceding century finds Yawsep, a bishop sent to India, copying Latin derived ritual texts while retaining traditional East Syrian material. The overseas connections themselves were changing. Language alone cannot supply a complete map of doctrine, loyalty and jurisdiction. ^{30, 31}

Stephen Neill once described the Thomas Christian church as neither wholly independent nor wholly indigenous, linking the problem to foreign bishops and a received liturgical language. That framing deserves examination. Independence, local belonging and linguistic inheritance are different questions. The evidence of Indian envoys, local leadership, copying and composition gives us reasons to resist measuring a church’s Indian character simply by the birthplace of its bishops. ³²

Fellowship measured by common access

The movement of Ephesians 2 deserves attention. Its first ten verses describe God’s mercy and life in Christ, before verse 11 calls Gentile readers to remember their earlier alienation. Verses 13 to 18 place Christ’s blood, his cross and access by one Spirit at the center of the changed relationship. Shared Christian life begins with what God has done, rather than with a community’s claim to have earned its standing. ⁴

Craig Keener relates the new humanity of Ephesians to its explicit concern with ethnic division. Christ reconciles both groups to God through the cross, and they belong together in his body. The passage concerns Jews and Gentiles before we apply it to later Christian relationships. Its force nevertheless challenges any fellowship that welcomes another people only on the assumption that they occupy a lower spiritual rank. ³³

Lionel Windsor warns that an interpretation of unity can become oppressive when it treats plurality only as a problem. In Ephesians, the body reaches beyond one local congregation. Common membership need not mean that every community has the same history or expresses every practice in the same way. Believers must listen closely enough to distinguish genuine disagreement about faith from discomfort with another people’s voice. ³⁴

Timothy Gombis reads the chapter’s movement towards a shared temple within the proclamation of Christ’s victory. On that reading, the result is a people gathered in peace before God. Christian triumph is displayed in reconciliation, rather than in one community claiming the right to dominate another. The reading sharpens a Pentecostal question: does our confidence in the Spirit produce fellowship consistent with the peace Christ has made? ³⁵

D. T. Everhart’s account of communal reconciliation distinguishes personal responsibility from the work that people must coordinate together. Addressing a shared practice can require action by a congregation, while individuals remain answerable for their conduct. Applied to received traditions, this asks a church to consider whom its shared life allows to act and speak, and whether its practices serve the fellowship it confesses. ³⁷

Ulrich Heckel connects this unity with the summons in Ephesians 4 to preserve what Christ has established. The chapter joins one body and one Spirit to varied gifts that equip the saints. A Pentecostal congregation can therefore welcome teaching from elsewhere while valuing the people, testimony and responsibilities already present locally. Humility, patience, truth and love are required of guests and hosts alike. ³⁶

Indian Christians looked towards Persia for bishops, books, teaching and a recognized place in a larger ecclesiastical fellowship. The surviving evidence also shows local work and initiative, interrupted connections and contested authority. Gratitude need not hide those complications. A church honours the gifts it has received when it makes room for the gifts entrusted to others, under the Lord who grants all his people access to the Father through one Spirit.