Calliana Or Kalliena

Calliana-From Cosmos’s Christian Topography.

Cosmas Indicopleustes (literally "Cosmas who sailed to India"; also known as Cosmas the Monk) was an Alexandrian Nestorian merchant ,probably a monk and later hermit,[1] He was a 6th-century traveller, who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian. His work Topography contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps.

Around 550 Cosmas wrote the once-copiously illustrated Christian Topography, a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century. His description of India and Sri Lanka during the 6th century is invaluable to historians."Indicopleustes" means "Indian voyager". While it is known from classical literature, especially the Periplus Maris Erythraei that there had been trade between the Roman Empire and India from the first century BCE onwards, Cosmas's report is one of the few from individuals who had actually made the journey. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts, the oldest dating to the ninth century.

In 522 CE, he visited the Malabar Coast (South India). He is the first traveler (Even though Theophilus surnamed the Indian claimed to be visited Malabar in AD 354 it’s not clear whether he was mentioning about the Arabian peninsula or Malabar) to mention presence of Christians in Malabar unlike Theophilus cosmos give a clear idea about the local flora and fauna of Malabar region which indicate that he actually visited Malabar. He wrote,

"In the Island of Taprobane (Ceylon), there is a echurch of the Christians, and clerks and faithful. Likewise at Malé where the pepper grows; and in the town of Kalliana there is also a bishop consecrated in Persia.”[2]

Within the mental framework mentioned above, Cosmas unfolds much more than the title of his work may suggest. The Christian Topography is not only a travelogue of places that might be interesting to a Christian, but it comprises both cosmology and geography. Cosmas had good sources on trade routes and on matters of local flora, fauna and geography is a fact. Most of the material relevant for our purpose comes from book 11 of the Christian Topography, that is, from the book which is, in all probability, an excerpt from Cosmas’ otherwise lost Geography. The texts relating to the Far East are embellished with illustrations of a third category. They are neither taken from illustrated Bible editions, nor designed to visualize theories, but were adapted from what Cosmas had actually seen in various places. A few of them may serve as examples.The seaports mentioned in the records of this period must have served as the natural outlets of the import and export trade borne along long-distance routes from the interior.

Calliana- A Place for business, important port city and Place of religious tolerance.

[1]From the remotest countries, I mean Tzinista and other trading places, it Taprobanê. (ie Sri Lanka) receives silk, aloes, cloves, sandalwood and other products, and these again are passed on to marts on this side, such as Male,( Malabar) where pepper grows, and to Calliana which exports copper and sesame-logs, and cloth for making dresses, for it also is a great place of business.

[2]There are other kings of different places in India who keep elephants, such as the King of Orrhotha, and the King of the Kalliana people, and the Kings of Sindu of Sibor, and of Male. One will have six hundred elephants, another five hundred, and so on, some more, some less. And the King of Sielediba gives good price for both the elephants and the horses. The elephants he buys by cubit measurement; for their height is measured from the ground and so the price is fixed according to the measurement, ranging from fifty to a hundred nomismata or more. Horses they bring to him from Persia. [5]

Again this is an interesting point from topography that “King of Orrhotha, King of the Kalliana people, and the Kings of Sindu, of Sibor, and of Male keep elephants”. Interesting to note that here cosmos mention that Sibor and Calliana are in two different countries (Port Sibor mentioned in the topography is same as the present day chaul (present day Kalyan)), also here he mentions that the king of Calliana people. In the book Malabar manual William Logan (also some other historians) identify Cosmos’s “Calliana” with present day Kalyanpura in the Kanara region. If we take calliana as presents day Canara region then Sibor and Calliana are in two different kingdoms .(Calliana in Canara ruled by Kadamba Dynasty and Sibor or chaul ruled by Chalukya dynasty in 565 AD).

[3] “Even in the Island of TAPRORANE in Further India. where the Indian sea is, there is a church of Christians with clergy and congregation of believers,....And such also is the case in the land called Male(Malabar)…where the pepper grows and in the place called Calliana' there is a bishop appointed from Persia…as well as in the island which they call the Isle of Dioscoris(Socotra) in the same Indian Sea. The inhabitants of that island speak Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies who ruled after Alexander of Macedon. There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the of the island and a multitude of Christians.[5]

Again this is another point historians were failed to analyze properly” A Persian bishopric with clergy and congregation of believers”. The only surviving evidence for the Persian Christian (Proper Iranian Christians with Pahlavi as their native language) connection to south India is the number of ancient crosses with Pahlavi inscription found all over south India (The oldest one seems to be the one at Mylapoor, more than half a dozen such crosses are found in the Indian state of Kerala dating between 5^th -7^th century AD).Also such a cross (without Pahlavi inscription but similar origin recently excavated from Sri Lanka).

Cosmas noted that the Christians of Calliana had a bishop appointed from Persia (most probably Fars), while the Christians of the Malabar Coast and Ceylon had priests and deacons but not bishops. The connection with Fars went back at least as far as the late 5th century, when the metropolitan Maʿna of Rev Ardashir sent copies of his Syriac and Persian translations of Greek devotional works to India for the use of the Indian clergy. [The province of Fars, the historic cradle of Persian civilization, was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the sixth and twelfth centuries. It was centered in what is now Fars Province, and besides a number of centers in Fars itself, the East Syrian ecclesiastical province also included a number of dioceses in Arabia and a diocese for the island of Socotra.]

India (Syriac: Beth Hindaye) was an ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, at least nominally, from the seventh to the sixteenth century. The Malabar Coast of India had long been home to a thriving East Syrian Christian community, known as the St. Thomas Christians. The Indian Christian community were initially part of the metropolitan province of Fars(Syriac: Beth Parsaye, ܒܝܬ ܦܪܣܝܐ in present day Iran), but were detached from that province in the 7th century, and again in the 8th, and given their own metropolitan bishop. As the community grew and immigration by East Syrians increased, the connection with the Church of the East, centered in the Persian capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (Present day Iraq), strengthened. In the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organized the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India, one of the church's illustrious Provinces of the Exterior.

Up to this day the archeologists failed to find any trace of pre Portuguese Christianity near present day Kalyan region (Bombay) .It is highly unlikely that such strong Christian community were disappeared even without leaving a trace. On the other hand recently excavated Persian cross from Agassim Goa suggests that it was once a centre of thriving Persian Christian community. This cross was discovered by Fr Cosme Costa SFX, an archaeologist cum historian of the Pilar Society of Goa accidentally on 27th of April 2001. This was found in a mound of Rock in a thicket in the premises of Saint Peter’s chapel at Dandiin Agaism at the fag end of the old port of Gopakapattana. This was actually the base of granite cross of Latin design- plain cross- which had crumbled down around 1995 on a cyclonic storm and was neglected since then. This Persian cross was hidden inside the mound and had come out and was about to fall into the sea. This was a granite slab with a Persian cross similar to the Mount cross- the two pillars and the arch encircling the Persian cross in a niche carved in granite. The round edge of the upper part shows the same Pahlavi inscriptions. The cross is similar to mount cross with dove above, three steps and the petal arrangement as in mount cross, equal armed cross with ends like a bud.There was a Portuguese inscription on the bottom of the niche. This cross was broken and only 4/5th of the cross were found. Hence half of the Pahlavi inscriptions are lost. The Portuguese inscription runs like this- ‘…A DE s.TOME…..DO R….ILEZ VS…..642…..’which has been interpreted as ‘A deS (Sao) Tome…do R(Regiao?) Ilez (Ilhas?) vs (Vizinhas?)…642(1642)’ It could be roughly translated as That which belongs to Saint Thomas’ (Christians?) from the region of (the neighbouring) islands (Tiswadi) 1642’ .This cross is unique in that we can see the evidence that this Persian cross was destroyed and put in the mound and erected a Latin cross instead o the same site.[6]

[4]The most notable places of trade in India are these: Sindu, Orrhotha, Calliana, Sibor, and then the five marts of Male which export pepper: Parti, Mangarouth, Salopatana, Nalopatana, Poudopatana. Then out in the ocean, at the distance of about five days and nights from the continent, lies Sielediba, that is Taprobanê. [Top. Chr. 11, 15]

Male means the coast of Malabar, Now Adule is 'Thulla or Zula on Annesley Bay, Sindu means the lower valley of Indus[The Persian empire when overthrown by Alexander the Great extended to the Indus, and even embraced territories lying eastward from that river].Pliny mentions an Indian race called the Horatae, who adjoined the Gulf of Cambay. Orrhotha-The name an incorrect transcription of soreth, a. form of Sauxashtra. the Surastrene of the Periples and of Ptolemy, It is now in Gujarat & It cannot be Surat, since this was not a place of any importance till Portuguese timu. Orrhotha seem to have been a port on the western coast of the Gujarat peninsula,Sibor probably Chaul, a seaport lying about twenty-three miles to the south of Bombay i.e. This port is the Simylla of Ptolemy. and the Saimur or Jaimur of the Arabian geographers. Mangarouth, is Mangalor. The termination patana in these three names [Salopatana, Nalopatana, Poudopatana.] means town. Poudopatana[New town] is the Podoperoura of Ptolemy. Thue three places were situated on the coast of Kottonarike—the pepper country male.[23]

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