The Shasana Plates.

47

Law, and devoutly kiss it. The women, too, then come into the body of the synagogue, and likewise kiss the sacred volume; after which the children are held up by their fathers to perform the same act of devotion.

We also went to the house of the Chief Rabbi, a fine old man. He there showed us the copper plates of which, if I remember rightly, you read in Buchanan's 'Christian Researches,' on which is engraven, in an obsolete Tamil character, a Shasana, or royal grant of privileges, made to them by the Gentile authorities of the country probably not less than 1,000 years ago. The grant is made by Erasy Virma, a prince whose capital was Cranganore, and who is supposed to be identical with one of the Perumals, a race of princes who ruled in Malabar in the early centuries of the Christian Era. The witnesses to the grant are seven petty rajahs, or nobles, of the surrounding States.

Many of the privileges sound strange to European ears; but it must be remembered that they were granted in a country where to this day a low-caste man must wear a cloth of a certain cut, and must not carry an umbrella, or ride in a palanquin; where a low-caste woman must not cover the upper portion of her person, or wear, in short, anything but the prescribed cloth round her loins. To Joseph Rabban, the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish colony at that time, and to his heirs, it was permitted,

amongst other things, to wear clothes of five colours, to ride horses and elephants, to be preceded by a servant, to have a certain kind of lamp carried before them (this is a custom still only belonging to the higher classes), to use the palanquin, and to carry an umbrella of state. In addition to such privileges, it was enacted that seventytwo families should be free of rent and taxes.

The reader is aware, no doubt, that there are both black and white Jews in this Cochin colony. On their unconscious heads have been built the most contradictory anthropological theories. Do the black Jews prove that in the course of many centuries a white race will become absolutely black under a tropical sun? Do the white Jews prove that climatic influence has no effect in bronzing the skin? Answer: the black Jews are not Jews at all in their origin. Their physiognomy at once shows that they are Malabars. I questioned the rabbi we visited about them, and he said simply, 'They are our servants. There can be no question that they were originally the slaves of the white Jews, obtained in most cases, probably many centuries ago, from the lower castes of the country. In the same way there are many Portuguese, so called, now in India, who are as dark as the lowest-caste natives. They profess to be, and have often been supposed by Europeans to be, the descendants of the Portuguese. That some of them carry Portuguese

Anthropological Theories.

49

blood in their veins I could not say; but there is very good evidence that they are, in almost every case, descended from the domestic slaves of the Portuguese, who were bought, and baptised with Portuguese names.

The white Jews are the Jews proper. Some of them, however, have a decidedly olive tint, and are by no means so fair as a European Jew. And though some are undoubtedly very fair, comparatively, it would be difficult to prove that European and Asiatic Jews have. not joined the colony even so late as the time of the Dutch; and hence difficult to prove through them that the influence of climate is nil in this respect. They are still in communication with the north. I have seen both a German Jew and also a Jerusalem Jew at the

6

same time in the synagogue. And in their palmier days there was no doubt occasionally, if not frequently (and local reports favour this view), an accession of new blood. I doubt, therefore, whether the white Jews of Cochin are an answer in the affirmative to M. Pouchet's question What nation has been transformed?' The white Jews of Cochin he cites as an instance of a race remaining pure.' No doubt they are purely Jews by descent, but is their colour pure ? I think not. There has been a change, and a change as great as I should have expected, especially as I cannot doubt an occasional infusion of new blood from the north.

6

E

It should be remembered that even the Hindus are not all black. We have in fact almost every grade of colour. A man's colour tells you at once of his occupation. The black man is the ground slave, who, like his ancestors for how many centuries, has worked day and night exposed to sun and rain, and wind and storm; his house a few cocoa-nut leaves, supported by half-a-dozen sticks, which he seldom troubles. His master, the landowner, the well-to-do Nair, who carries his umbrella in the sun, and lives and sleeps in a good substantial house, is brown, but by no means black. The Malabar Brahmin, who has never earned his living by the sweat of his brow, is probably wealthy, perhaps a lord of the manor, never appears in the sun but wellclothed and under his umbrella, is seldom ever brown; he is oftener a dingy white. I have seen a high-caste woman all but as fair as a white Jewess.

As a rule a man's colour belongs to his caste; indeed the Aryans have always used the word 'colour' to denote 'caste;' they found the aborigines, as we should suspect, darker than themselves, and therefore called them men of colour.' These Turanian aborigines (if they were aborigines) had been already bronzed in tending their flocks, or subduing the Indian forests and plains to the plough. What colour were the Aryans when they invaded India from Central Asia? Were they not as fairor, put it in this way, could they have been much less

Anthropological Theories.

51

fair, than the Jews when they colonized Cranganore from Palestine? And what colour are the Aryans of India now? They are all shades, from a nearly European fairness to a deep chestnut colour. Has this been the result of the mixture of an originally white race and a dark Turanian race? I think not. It has been the result of climate. The lady who lives in seclusion in her capacious house, under the shade of her tope of mangoes and palms, is fair. The slave who lives and works in the paddy-fields is black. The Âryan woman, who has kept at home,' as her ancestors have done for centuries, has preserved her complexion in the same degree as the Jewess, whose ancestors did the same.

For the same reason the Brahmanee woman from the woody valleys of Malabar is generally fairer than her sister of the naked Carnatic, who is exposed to a fiercer sun and heat. The Jew of Cochin has not lived in the field, but in the merchant's office; he has not handled the plough, but the ledger. I should not therefore expect that his colour would be much modified; at least not in a greater proportion than that of the high-caste Hindu, who has been in India perhaps three times as long. There is nothing whatever in the mere skin colour of different Indian castes to throw a doubt on the unity of the human race. There is everything

to indicate that the colour is induced.