Two centuries had elapsed without any particular information concerning the Nestorian Christians in the interior of India. It was doubted by many if they were still in existence, when they were visited by Dr. < laudius Buchanan in 1«07. lie found in the neigh- l)orhood of Travancore the Syrian metropolitan and his clergy. They were much dei)ressed, but they still numbered (ifty-iive churches. Tliey made use of the liturgy of Antioch, in the Syrian language. They had many old and valuable copies of the Scriptures. One of these, a Syrian manuscript of high antiipiity, they presented to Dr. Buchanan, by whom it was placed in the university library at Cambridge. He describes the doctrines of the Syrian Christians as few in number, but pure, and agreeing in essential points with those of the Church of England. There were then, he computed, 200,000 Syrian Christians in the south of India, besides the Indians who speak the Malabar language, and are suljject to the (Miiirch of lionie. Dr. Buchanan thus describes the appearance of Mar Dionysius the metro-
' politan : " He was dressed in a vestment of dark -red silk, a large golden cross hung from his neck, and his venerable beard reached below his girdle. On public occasions he wears the episcopal mitre, and a muslin
\ robe is thrown over his under garment ; and in his hand he bears the crosier, or pastoral statt'. lie is a man of highly respectable character in his Church ; eminent for his piety, and for the attention he devotes to his sacred functions." Later visitors speak in less glowing terms of this interesting people. Their general igno- rance seems to have been much greater than Dr. Biichau-
I an was led to suppose, and they observe superstitions with which he does not appear to have been made ac- quainted. But in 1853, almost simultaneously with the restoration of the patriarchate of the ChakUeaiis, those subject to the Komish Church threw off the yoke out
I of hatred towards the Jesuits. The barefooted Barna- bites have, in recent times, been trying with more zeal
' than success to bring them again into the liomish com-
; munion. The Christians of St. Thomas are still con- sidered to number about 70,000. forming an independent state under the protectorate of Great Britain, and gov- erned by their priests and elders. Tiiey honor the mem- ory of Theodore and Xestorius in their Syriac liturgy, and adhere to the jSestorian patriarchs. Sec Ciiius- TiAxs OF St. Thomas.
Besides these Nestorians, there are yet some 200,000 Jacobites around the coasts of ^lalabar and Travancore. These appear to have gone there only since the IGth century, perhaps on account of the above-mentioned re- action "against Romanism. The Jacobite patriarch sent Gregory of Jerusalem as metropolitan to India; the office of maphrian was afterwards held successively by Andreas, Basilius, John, and Thomas, who in 1709 and 1720 wrote to the Jacobite patriarch Ignatius. In his last letter, among other information, he states that in 1709 Gabriel of Nineveh, who was sent to him as metro- politan by patriarch Elias, and whom he received be- cause he recognised two natures and two persons in Christ, had since been discovered by him to be a heretic (Nestorian). Anterior conversions to Jacobitism as well as the existence of anterior Jacobite communities in India appear doubtful. To this must be added that there are said to be four Jacobite bishops in India, one of whom resides in Cociiin-China. See Jacobitics.
V. We now return to the Xesforiaiis of Persia and the neighboring countries. Like the Christians of St. Thomas, these too had perished from the knowledge of European Christendom, and their existence had been almost forgotten when the missionary enterprise of the
NESTORIANS
967
NESTORIANS
American Protestant churches again brought them into notice. Attention was particularly called to them in 1830 by Messrs. Smith and Dvvight, missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions, who, while on an exploring missionary tour, visited the Nestorians. They embodied their observa- tions in a publication entitled Researches. From this source and other works of Badger (below quoted), and Dr. Anderson's Oriental Missions, we derive the follow- ing statements: Dividing the Turkish from the Per- sian empire is a wild range of mountains, now called Kiirdistan, which includes within its boundaries por- tions of the ancient Assyria, Media, and Armenia. In the most inaccessible parts of this district the Nestorians dwell, about 100,000 strong. They are still governed by " meliks," or kings, chosen from their own people by the popular voice irregularly expressed. The office of these chiefs is usually hereditary in the same family. The Turkish governm'ent, however, is making vigorous efforts, through the agency of the neighboring Kurds, to reduce these independent Nes- torians to a state of vassalage. Dwelling in these mountainous recesses, their independence is dearly purchased; they find it difficult to obtain a bare subsist- ence, and many of them are mis- erably poor; numbers travel abroad and beg as a profession. Their fare is coarse and their manners rude. During the sum- mer manj"^ of them descend to the plains of Ornmiah, at the foot of the Kurdistan range, and here a considerable body of Nes- torian Christians, estimated at about 40,000, have fixed their residence. They have a tradi- tion that their ancestors came down from the mountains to live on the plain five or six hundred years ago. It is probable that they were entirely swept away from this province during the devastations of Timurlane, but there are monuments of their residence here at an earlier pe- riod. The oldest mosque in the city ofOruraiah was once a Chris- tian church. The Nestorians of the plain partake in their man- ners of the urbanity of the Per- sians, and they themselves de- nominate their fellow-Christians,