Article contents
White and Black Jews at Cochin, the story of a controversy1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
The controversy between White and Black Jews at Cochin still aroused bitter passion and partisanship a generation ago; now it belongs to history. Today fewer than fifty Jews and Jewesses remain in Kerala, scattered between Cochin itself and Mattancherry, Ernakulam and Parur. The rest of this historic and influential community have emigrated from India, most of them to Israel. It may, then, be not inopportune to offer a fresh analysis of this celebrated affair. In its principal features it was, I hope to establish, peculiar to India. Nowhere else could hereditary distinctions between the two sections of a single Jewish community have been rigidly maintained for centuries, including tabus on intermarriage and on free association on religious and social occasions. Now the old antipathies between White and Black have abated, as their protagonists are divorced from India. The sources and progress of the dispute may be analysed withour rancour.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1983
References
2 On the similar antagonism between White and Black Jews among the Bene Israel in the Bombay area see the bibliography in Fischel, W. J., art. “Bene Israel”, Encyclopaedia Judaica.Google Scholar For a general treatment of relations between White and Black Jews at Cochin, Bar-Giora, N., Sefunot, I, 1957, 243 (Heb.).Google Scholar
3 Charlesworth, M. P., Trade-routes and commerce of the Roman empire, 1926;Google ScholarWarmington, E. H., The commerce between the Roman empire and India, 1928.Google Scholar
4 See in particular Rabin, C., “Loanword evidence in Biblical Hebrew for trade between Tamilnad and Palestine in the first millenium B.C.”, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies 1968, I, 1971, 432.Google Scholar
5 Sternbach, L., “Jews in mediaeval India …”, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Eighth Session, 1945, 169;Google ScholarRabinowitz, L., Jewish merchant adventurers, 1948.Google Scholar Jewish documents are set out in Strauss, E., Zion, IV, 1939, 217; VII, 1941–2, 145Google Scholar and Braslavsky, J., ib., VII, 135;Google Scholar see Baron, S. W., A social and religious history of the Jews, IV, 1957, 183.Google Scholar
6 Adriaan Moens in A. Galletti, Van der Burg, A. J. and Groot, P., The Dutch in Malabar (Selections from the records of the Madras Government: Dutch records, No. 13), 1911, 192;Google ScholarKoder, S. S., “History of the Jews of Kerala”, in Menachery, George (ed.), The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia of India, II, 1973, 183.Google Scholar
7 Puthiakunnel, T., in Menachery, op. cit, 26.Google Scholar
8 For the decipherment of the plates see especially Hultzsch, E., Epigraphia Indica, III, 1894–1895;Google Scholar also Segal, J. B., “The Jews of Cochin and their neighbours”, Essays presented to … Israel Brodie, 1969, 390f.Google Scholar
9 Gravezande, A., History of the White and Black Jews of Cochin, Malabar Coasts, 1771–1781, IIIGoogle Scholar (Verhandelingen door het Genootschap der Wetenschappen te Vlissingen, Middelberg VI, 1781);Google Scholar Isaac Elijah Hallegua, Cambridge MOr 2787, No. 935, 11.
10 Halliwell, O., The voyage and travaille of Sir John Maundeville, 1839, 167;Google ScholarCordier, H., Les voyages en Asie … du bienheureux frère Odoric de Pordenone, 1891, 99;Google Scholar Dimashqi in Mehren, M. H. F., Manuel de la cosmographie du moyen age…, 1874, 237;Google ScholarGuyard, S., Géographie d'Aboul Feda, 1883, II, 115;Google ScholarYule, H., The Book of Ser Marco Polo, II, 1871, 312;Google Scholar Benjamin of Tudela in Adler, E. N., Jewish travellers, 1930, 60Google Scholar (but see Simon, A. I., “Did Benjamin of Tudela visit Malabar?”, The Jewish Advocate, January, 1945);Google ScholarJohn, of Montecorvino in Yule, Cathay and the way thither, III, 1914, 63.Google Scholar
11 Cambridge MOr 2786 No. 974/4 (Mashbit Milḥamot); Achan, P. A., Indian Antiquary, LIX, 1934, 134f.Google Scholar
12 Travels in Asia and Africa, tr. and ed. Gibb, H. A. R., 1929, 238.Google Scholar
13 Galletti, , 11.Google Scholar
14 Nissim, R., No'mar shirah, I.Google ScholarDavidson, , Thesaurus of mediaeval Hebrew poetry, 1970, sv.;Google ScholarAdler, , op. cit., 154;Google ScholarNeubauer, A., Anecdota Oxoniensia, IV (Semitic Series) ii, 1895, 182.Google ScholarHamilton, A., A new account of the East Indies, publ. 1727 but compiled some thirty years earlier, i, 321,Google Scholar writes: “In times of old (Cranganore) bore the name of a kingdom and was a Republick of Jews … (They) increased … till in Process of Time … they came to purchase the little kingdom of Cranganore.” But in the latter half of the 18th century Moens states: “It was formerly believed that the Jews possessed in earlier times the kingdom of Cranganore and had their own king, but not the least trace of this is to be found. Indeed, since the republic of the Jews came to an end “ there is no evidence that they ever got it again”, Galletti, , 196.Google Scholar
15 See the references at n. 10 above.
16 For the Portuguese attacks on Cranganore, Namiar, O. K., The Kunjali admirals of Calicut, 1963, 46;Google Scholar see also Moens in Galletti, , 197.Google Scholar
17 Jacobus Canter Visscher, Letters from Malabar, written c. 1723, tr. Drury, H., 1862, 115.Google Scholar
18 de Paiva, Mosseh Pereyra, Notisias dos Judeos de Cochin, 1687,Google Scholar ed. Amzalak, M. Bensabat, 1923, 11;Google ScholarNeocorus, L. and Sikius, H., Bibliotheca Librorum Novorum, III, 1698, 870;Google Scholar Moens in Galletti, , 198;Google Scholar Isaac Elijah Hallegua, Cambridge MOr 2787 No. 935, 5.
19 Barbosa, Duarte, A description of the coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the beginning of the sixteenth century, ed. Stanley, H. E. J., 1866, 154.Google Scholar
20 Grynaeus, Simon, Novus Orbis Regionum …, 1555, ch. 130.Google Scholar
21 ud-Deen, Zeen, Tofhat al-mujahidin, ed. Rowlandson, M. J., 1833, 117.Google Scholar
22 Moens, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
23 This synagogue was destroyed by Tipu, but its foundation inscription is to be found in the courtyard of the Paradesi synagogue, Sassoon, D. S., Ohel David, 1932, 577.Google Scholar
24 Balthazar Sprenger in Hümmerlich, F., “Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Fahrt der ersten Deutschen nach dem portugiesischen Indien 1505/6”, Abhandlungen der königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse, XXX Band, 3, 1918, 124;Google ScholarBarbosa, , op. cit., 156.Google Scholar
25 de Paiva, Pereyra, op. cit., 8.Google Scholar
26 n. 17 above.
27 See Hamilton, , loc. cit. On Jews at Cochin in the 16th century,Google ScholarFischel, W. J., “Cochin in Jewish History …”, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XXX, 1962, 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 Above p. 229.
29 Between 1560 and 1568 according to Hallegua, , op. cit., 7, but his dates are doubtful.Google Scholar
30 For the Hebrew text, Marx, A., “Contribution à l'histoire des Juifs de Cochin”, REJ, LXXXIX, 1930–1931, 293.Google Scholar
31 Heb. ‘ăbadim hăluqin.
32 Heb. běehezqat yěhudim.
33 Heb. miqṣatam ṭablu lěshem ‘abdut umiqṣatam lěshem shiḥrur.
34 Heb. goyim ‘akum.
35 cf. Pyrard, F., The Voyage of Francois Pyrard of Laval, ed. Gray, A. and Bell, H. C. P., 1888, II, 66,Google Scholar “In the India, if a man has a male child by his slave, it is legitimate, and the slave becomes free, although she cannot leave her master without his consent; after his death, however, she is enfranchised, and she can be no more sold”.
36 The reply of Radbaz is summarized by Hallegua, , op. cit., 9.Google Scholar
37 This distinction may have been recognized by the Portuguese. From Assentos do Conselho do Estado, II, 159–61, Doc. 45,Google Scholar about a meeting on 13th December 1636, we infer that the Viceroy of Goa had asked the king of Portugal for a ruling, about “the synagogues of the White and Black Jews permitted by the king of Cochin on his territory”; see further p. 234 below.
38 de Paiva, Pereyra, 8;Google Scholar Yaḥya b. Abraham Sharaf, Cambridge MOr 2785 No. 1023, 40, cf. MOr 2786 No. 1021.
39 Yule, , The Book ofSer Marco Polo ii, 291.Google Scholar
40 Galletti, , 16.Google Scholar
41 Pyrard, , II, 38, cf. I, 373.Google Scholar See also Mandelslo, , The Travels of John Albert Mandelslo … into the East Indies…, 1669, 82;Google ScholarVan Caerden, P., 1606,Google Scholar in Recueil des voyages … de la Compagnie des Indes orientales, III, Amsterdam, 1725, 608f.;Google ScholarSchouten, Gautier, Voyage aux Indes Orientales commencé l'an 1658 et fini l'an 1665, 1725, 512.Google Scholar So Schouten, , op. cit., 414,Google Scholar declares that in an attack on Cranganore the Portuguese lost 190 “whites”. Barbosa, , op. cit., 104Google Scholar describes the kings of Malabar as “brown, almost white”, so Schouten, , op. cit., 425.Google Scholar
42 Pyrard, , II, 121.Google Scholar
43 Pyrard, , II, 67.Google ScholarBarbosa, , op. cit., 75,Google Scholar writes that Goa “was inhabited by many Moors, respectable men and foreigners, white men and rich merchants”.
44 Heb. kushi. For the date of this work, Y. Ratzaby, , Sefer Hammusar by Zacharia al-Ḍahri, 1965, 40ff.Google Scholar
45 Heb. ha-kushim.
46 Ratzaby, , 130f.Google Scholar (Maḥberet, viii, 7.33).Google Scholar
47 Heb. běne něgidim.
48 Heb. gerim wě'enam běne běrit.
49 Ratzaby, , 131ff.Google Scholar
50 So Day, F., The land of the Permauls or Cochin: its past and its present, 1863, 353n.,Google Scholar “The pure white Jews have never been able to continue their race without the aid of immigrants from other places”; see Moens in Galletti, , 197.Google Scholar
51 Barbosa, , op. cit., 146f.,Google Scholar “There were other foreign Moors in Calicut whom they call Paradesy. These are Arabs, Persians, Guzeratis, Khoorasamys and Decanys … When the Portuguese became masters of the country most of the Paradesis left”.
52 Barbosa, , loc. cit.,Google Scholar “There are a great quantity of Moors, who are of the same language and colour as the Gentiles of the country … They call these Moors Mapulers”. cf. Van Linschoten, , The voyage of John Huygen Linschoten to the East Indies, ed. Burnell, A. C., 1885, 285.Google Scholar
53 Van Linschoten, , 70 and 285.Google Scholar
54 Van Caerden, , op. cit., 626,Google Scholar cf. Mandelslo, , op. cit., 86 on Jews at Goa.Google Scholar
55 Pyrard, , I, 435;Google Scholarvan Caerden, , loc. cit.;Google Scholarvan Linschoten, , 285.Google Scholar
56 Schouten, , op. cit., 558;Google Scholar cf. Stavorinus, J. S., Voyages to the East Indies, 1789, III. 224.Google Scholar
57 Schouten, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
58 Baldaeus, Philip, A true and exact description of the most celebrated East-Indian coasts of Malabar and Coromandel…, 1672, 570b.Google Scholar
59 Israel, Manasseh ben, “A Declaration to the Common-wealth of England”, Pamphlets relating to the Jews in England…, ed. Radin, P., 1939, 9Google Scholar and id., The hope of Israel, 1650, sect. 32;Google Scholar see Wolf, L., Manasseh ben Israel's mission to Oliver Cromwell, 1901.Google Scholar
60 Schouten, , loc. cit.;Google ScholarGalletti, , 182.Google Scholar
61 Baldaeus, , op. cit., 572aGoogle Scholar (who does not mention the revenge of the Portuguese); Stavorinus, , op. cit., III, 225;Google ScholarSchouten, , op. cit., 445;Google ScholarGalletti, , 197.Google Scholar
62 van Rheede, A. in Selections from the records of the Madras Government. Dutch records No. 14, 9.Google Scholar (Whitehouse, T., Some historical notices of Cochin on the Malabar coast, 1859, 35,Google Scholar cites van Rheede differently.) See also Stavorinus, , who visited Malabar in 1777, op. cit., III, 225,Google Scholar The Jews “dwell in a separate town, the houses of which are built of stone, and are mostly plastered white on the outside”. They had three synagogues, of which the “chiefest” is certainly to be identified as the Paradesi; Stavorinus describes its furnishings carefully.
63 Levy, Reuben, “A collection of Yemenite piyyutim”, Jewish Studies in memory of Israel Abrahams, 1927, 266.Google Scholar
64 Neocorus, and Sikius, , op. cit., III, 871,Google Scholar citing David Rahaby.
65 Stavorinus, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
66 Day, , op. cit., 145.Google Scholar
67 Notisias, 7,Google Scholar cf. 4 margin and 7f.
68 Visscher, , 116 (cited n. 17 above).Google Scholar
69 Galletti, , 197 (cited n. 6 above).Google Scholar
70 Galletti, , 198.Google Scholar The list of seven localities is repeated frequently, e.g. Cambridge MOr 2786 No. 880, MOr 2816 No. 1030, 18 (Sassoon, D. S., Ohel David 577),Google ScholarMOr 2785 No. 1023. 23, 40 (Ohel David 967b).Google Scholar
71 On the mudeliar, Visscher, , 115;Google ScholarGalletti, , 192 and 196;Google ScholarMenon, K. P. Padmanabha, History of Kerala, ed. Menon, T. K. Krishna, II, 1929, 521.Google Scholar
72 de Paiva, Pereyra, 4 (cited n. 18 above).Google Scholar
73 Id., op. cit., 6.
74 Id., op. cit., 7. There may have been less admixture of foreign blood during the Dutch period at Cochin, cf. Visscher, , 116,Google Scholar “The number of White Jews who have of late come here from Europe, Baghdad and Cairo, is small; but there are some also who have been settled here for many centuries”.
75 de Paiva, Pereyra, loc. cit. On the return of the Jewish delegation to Amsterdam in 1686,Google Scholar the Dutch congregation sent to Cochin a supply of Hebrew texts – Pentateuchs, festival prayer books, the Shulḥan ‘Arukh, midrash and Qabbalah, Cambridge MOr 2816 No. 1030, 8.
76 Visscher, , loc. cit.,Google ScholarGalletti, , 87.Google Scholar
77 Moens in Galletti, , 198, 123.Google Scholar
77 Yaḥya b. Abraham Sharaf, Cambridge MOr 2785 No. 1023, 32. The Jews also prepared gunpowder, Moens in Galletti, , 87.Google Scholar
79 Visscher, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
80 Stavorinus, , op. cit., 226.Google Scholar
81 Selections from the records of Fort St. George …, 1915, 102.Google Scholar On the wide extent of Jewish involvement in the economy of Dutch Cochin, Fischel, as n. 27 above.
82 Fischel, , “The Rotenburg family in Dutch Cochin of the eighteenth century”, Studia Rosenthaliana, I, 1967, 32.Google Scholar
83 Moens in Galletti, , 88.Google Scholar
84 Moens in Galletti, , 87,Google Scholar cf. 77. In a report to the Government of Batavia in 1772 Moens states that “we have … added about the protection of the Jews, which was always a Bridge of an Instrument, and although they live in the Rajah's own country, and close to His Highness's Palace, still the Company used to afford them a kind of … Protection”, Selections from … St. George, 107.Google Scholar
85 Fischel, , op. cit., 41.Google Scholar
86 Selections from … St. George, 108.Google Scholar
87 Selections from … St. George, 78.Google Scholar
88 Visscher, , Letters, 116 (cited n. 17 above).Google Scholar
89 Moens in Galletti, , 197.Google Scholar
90 Moens, loc. cit., Visscher, , loc. cit.;Google Scholar so already de Paiva, Pareyra, 7.Google Scholar
91 So Moens in Galletti, , 198,Google Scholar writes that Black Jews “are treated by the White Jews with coldness and contempt”.
92 de Paiva, Pereyra, Notisias, 8.Google Scholar
93 Heb. hit'olĕlu; Yahya, Cambridge MOr 2785 No. 1023, 32 (Sassoon, , Ohel David 967b).Google Scholar
94 Visscher, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
95 Galletti, , 93;Google Scholar Moens in Galletti, , 198.Google Scholar
96 Selections from … St. George, 36.Google Scholar
97 Selections from … St. George, 48.Google Scholar
98 Selections from … St. George, 50.Google Scholar
99 Selections from … St. George, Judicial consultation, 31.Google Scholar
100 Selections from … St. George, 104, cf. 110.Google Scholar
101 Menon, Puthezhattu Raman, Sakthan Thampuran and the Jews.Google Scholar
102 Menon, P. Raman, loc. cit.;Google Scholar so also A collection of historical records, Malayalam Document 9, 22.3.1813.
103 Guide to the records of the Malabar district 1714–1835, 1936, VII, 128, 221;Google Scholar for the Rajah's case, Menon, P. Raman, op. cit.Google Scholar
104 Selections from … St. George, 36;Google ScholarGuide to the Records … 1714–1835, VII. 217, VIII. 128f., 141;Google Scholar Guide No. 9, 258.
105 Selections from … St. George, 56.Google Scholar
106 Selections from … St. George, 55, cf. 70.Google Scholar
107 Selections from … St. George, 69.Google Scholar
108 Selections from … St. George, 101.Google Scholar
109 Selections from … St. George, 102.Google Scholar
110 Buchanan, Claudius, Christian researches in Asia, 1812, 219.Google Scholar
111 Buchanan, , loc. cit.Google Scholar Buchanan is in error about the synagogues at Cochin. Moens in Galletti, , 197,Google Scholar reports that there were then four synagogues at Cochin de Sima, “next to the palace of the king of Cochin”; one was “for the White Jews”. By Buchanan's time the Cochangadi synagogue had been destroyed by Tipu; the Kadavumbagam and Thekumbagam synagogues were used by the Black Jews, the Paradesi synagogue by the White Jews. On the synagogues see pp. 230, 234 f., 236–8 and n. 62 above and Bar-Giora, N., “A note on the history of the synagogues in Cochin”, Sefunot, II, 1958, 218 (Heb.).Google Scholar
112 Buchanan, , 224f.Google Scholar
113 Fischel, , Unknown Jews in unknown lands: the travels of Rabbi David d'Beth Hillel (1824–1832), 1973, 113.Google Scholar
114 Guide to the records … 1714–1835, IX, 112.Google Scholar
115 Selections from … St. George, 120f.;Google Scholar see also Eliahoo, Eliya ben, Cochin Jewish records from state archives (tr. from Malayalam by Elias, E.), Document XI.Google Scholar
116 Cambridge MOr 2786 No. 1021.
117 In the agreement dated 1795 between the British and Dutch on the capitulation of Cochin, one article reads, “… with regard to slaves. It is a name unknown in a British territory”, Selections from … St. George, 9.Google Scholar Traffic in slaves was intercepted by the British navy, Guide No. 9, 248, 251. Nevertheless, “although the traffic and expectation of slaves have been forbidden”, according to a report of 1804 their exposure to tigers and inclement weather continued to cause anxiety as late as 1819 and 1823, Guide to the records … 1714–1835, VIII, 69.Google Scholar
118 A protest against the construction of a synagogue at Fort Cochin by Ava was addressed by White Jews to the Diwan of Cochin, Eliahoo, Eliya ben, op. cit.,Google Scholar Document XV. Ava was still at Fort Cochin in the time of Sapir, J., Eben Sapir, 1866, II, 70ff.Google Scholar and of Day, , op. cit., 336.Google Scholar The latter relates that Ava with his “half-caste Jews” had separated themselves “about 15 years since”, because their women-folk were not “allowed to dress themselves in the golden chains and ornaments worn by the higher classes. In the British town they can now do as they please…”. By the time of Reinmann, Solomon, Massě'ot Shělomoh, 1884, 162,Google Scholar the dissidents had returned to Jew Town.
119 Around 1818, since T. Dawson was recalled to England in that year, Hunt, W. S., The Anglican Church in Travancore and Cochin (1816–1916), I, 1920, 154.Google Scholar
120 cf. Hunt, , 155.Google Scholar
121 A collection of historical records, Document 16 dated 30th September 1848.
122 Lawson, Charles A., British and Native Cochin, 1861, 123.Google Scholar
123 Sapir, , op. cit., ch. 23 (p. 58).Google Scholar
124 Benjamin, J. J., Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855, 1863, 183.Google Scholar
125 Lawson, , op. cit., 124.Google Scholar So Day, , op. cit., 344Google Scholar writes, “Some of the darkest coloured of these (Black) Jews are so like the Natives of Malabar as at once to convince the most sceptical observer that they must have originated from amongst the surrounding population”.
126 Sapir, , 65 and 67f. (cited in 118 above).Google Scholar
127 Sapir, , 68f.Google Scholar
128 Benjamin, , 185.Google Scholar
129 Day, , loc. cit.,Google Scholar states, however, that the Black Jews were also blacksmiths, tailors, fishermen and house servants, and that they (rather than White Jews) were bookbinders.
130 Sapir, , 68.Google Scholar
131 Reinmann, , op. cit., 162.Google Scholar
132 Benjamin, , loc. cit.Google Scholar
133 Sapir, , 58 and 67.Google Scholar
134 p. 242 above.
135 The affair is conveniently summarized in Musleah, E. N., On the banks of the Ganga…, 1975, 371.Google Scholar
136 See Musleah, , 372.Google Scholar A letter from the Chief Rabbi's emissary, Asher Levi, to the British Resident at Travancore and Cochin in 1882 appears in Eliahoo, Eliya ben, op. cit., Document XV.Google Scholar
137 p. 230 f., 232 and 236 above.
138 Reinmann, , op. cit., 160ff.;Google Scholar Cambridge MOr 2787 No. 935 p. 19; David Rahaby in MOr 2816 No. 1030 p. 9, cf. 23f.
139 de Costa, A., “The ‘White’ and ‘Black’ Jews of Malabar”, ed. Lord, J. Henry, Indian Church Quarterly Review, 66796.Google Scholar
140 n. 14 above.
141 p. 243 above.
142 See Ḥayyim Ya'aqov Cohen, “Quntres mashbit milḥamot”, Cambridge MOr 2786 No. 974 pp. lf.
143 de Paiva, Pereyra, Notisias, 7.Google Scholar
144 p. 243 above.
145 See above pp. 233 f.
146 See the signatures in various documents of the Paradesi synagogue, Bar-Giora, , Sefunot, II, 1958, 234, 237, 238, etc.Google Scholar
147 p. 230 above.
148 Cambridge MOr 2787 No. 935 pp. 9f., cf. MOr 2786 No. 880 p. 4. Some other statements by de Costa are incorrect. “Rabbi Marigash” was not a “Jewish noble”; the letter to him was sent from Cochin, not Cranganore. The plate granted to Joseph Rabban was not “one single sheet written on both sides”, nor was the original inscription on brass, rather than on copper. There is no evidence that the original copper-plates were purloined by Claudius Buchanan and taken to Cambridge — the plates there appear to be copies.
149 Raffalovitch, Samuel, Qadmoniyot ha-yěhudim běMalabar, 1901 (Heb.).Google Scholar
150 Hunt, , 26 (see n. 119 above).Google Scholar
151 Thurston, Edgar, Castes and tribes of Southern India, II, 1909, 488.Google Scholar David Sassoon wrote, somewhat strangely, in a letter dated 22 November 1898, Cambridge MOr 2786 No. 880, “There are two kinds of Black Jews in Cochin, one is called by the name of black owing to his dark colour and the other because he is a Meshurar”.
152 Cited by Thurston, , 483.Google Scholar
153 Koder, S. S., The Jews of Malabar, 1951.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by