The Kollam (Quilon) Syrian copper plates, also known as the Kollam Tarisappalli copper plates, or Kottayam inscription of Sthanu Ravi, or Tabula Quilonensis (c. 849 CE) are a copper plate grant issued by Ayyan Adikal, the chieftain of Kollam, conferring privileges upon a Syrian Christian merchant named Maruvan Sapir Iso, in the name of the Tarissapalli (the Christian church) in Kollam, located on the Malabar Coast of southern India. The inscription â notably incomplete â is engraved on five copper plates (four horizontal and one vertical) in Old Malayalam or Middle Tamil, using the Vattezhuthu script with necessary Grantha characters. It is considered the oldest available inscription from the medieval Chera dynasty of Kerala.
The charter is dated to the fifth regnal year of medieval Chera ruler Sthanu Ravi Kulasekhara (849/850 CE). Until 2013, it was believed that the five plates represented two separate grants (dated separately), issued at different times, to Syrian Christian merchants on the Malabar Coast. The fifth plate contains signatures of witnesses to the grant in Arabic (Kufic script ), Middle Persian (cursive Pahlavi script), and Judeo-Persian (standard square Hebrew script), indicating the presence of Jewish and Muslim communities in Kerala. The record also contains few characters in some undeciphered script/language(s).
One part of the copper plates (four plates) is preserved at the Devalokam Aramana of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, while the other two smaller plates are kept at the Poolatheen Aramana in Thiruvalla, belonging to the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church. A second inscription mentioning another "Tarisappalli" was discovered in Periyapattinam in 2022 (Periyapattinam Inscription).
The grant is dated to the fifth regnal year (849/50 CE) of the medieval Chera ruler of Kerala, Sthanu Ravi (Tamil: Tanu Ravi). It was drafted in the presence of Chera prince Vijayaraga, Venad chieftain Ayyan Adikal Thiruvadikal, junior chieftain Rama Thiruvadikal, other important officers of the Venad chiefdom (such as the adhikarar, the prakrithi, the punnathala padi, and the pulakkudi padi) and representatives of the merchant guilds anjuvannam and manigramam.
The charter grants land to the Christian merchant Mar Sapir Iso, described in it as "the founder of the Kollam trading city (the nagara) and the builder of the Kollam Tarisa Church". The land, evidently a large settlement with its bonded occupants (serfs), is donated as an "attipperu" by Ayyan Adikal. Attipperu, or dhara-purvaka, was perhaps a precursor to the later "janmam" tenure. Sapir Iso also recruited two merchant guilds â the anjuvannam and the manigramam â as the tenants of the nagara under the karanmai tenure. The Six Hundred, the Nair militia of Venad, was entrusted with the protection of the nagara and the church. The charter also granted bonded serfs to the nagara and the church, including personnel such as agricultural laborers (the vellalars), carpenters (the thachar), the ezhavar and, salt-makers (the eruviyar).
Additionally, the charter granted Sapir Iso several titles, rights, and aristocratic privileges. It also states that all revenues from the donated land and its occupants were "exempted", which perhaps meant that these were to be transferred to the church.
Following is a widely accepted English translation of the inscription (Narayanan, in "Cultural Symbiosis in Kerala", 1972). The 2013 study on the plates does not provide an English translation.
The vertical plate (plate number 5) contains several signatures of witnesses to the grant in Arabic (Kufic script), Middle Persian (cursive Pahlavi script), and Judeo-Persian (standard square Hebrew script).
Arabic signatures â Kufic script
Middle Persian signatures â Cursive Pahlavi script
Judeo-Persian signatures â Standard Square Hebrew script
The presently available text of the Quilon Syrian copper plates is notably incomplete (interrupting at the end of plate 4). However, two seemingly complete transcripts of the inscription are extant. These are the Garshuni Malayalam script transcript (17th century) and the French text of du Perron (18th century). The interrupted content of plate 4 continues in du PerronâÂÂs French text (with the names of seventeen local notables, some of whom were mentioned earlier). After that comes a passage mentioning the famous Thomas of Cana or "Knai Thoma" episode (available in both transcripts). This passage, too, is later interrupted (and the signatures in Arabic and Persian follow).
It is speculated that this portion is nothing other than the first part of the lost Thomas of Cana copper plates. This grant was issued by an unidentified medieval Chera king of Kerala to the Christian merchants in the city of "Makotayar Pattinam" (Mahodayapuram, present day Kodungallur). The dating of the record remains a matter of scholarly debate. The Quilon Syrian copper plates (available text) also include a reference to a prior grant, stating that the Christians had previously been endowed with certain rights by the Chera ruler at Mahodayapuram.
The French text of du Perron (translation):
Scholar Perczel gives the following explanation for the presence of Thomas of Cana text within Quilon Syrian copper plates transcripts.
The Quilon grant and the Thomas of Cana grant were originally issued as two physically separate copper plate inscriptions. However, after a period of time, the two grant texts were re-engraved together (as a unified copy; on six copper plates, excluding the vertical plate). In this copy, the text of the Thomas of Cana grant began immediately after the end of the text of the Quilon grant (on the same plate, plate 4). Later, the grants needed to be separated (but the separation could not be made perfectly. So the beginning of the text of the Thomas of Cana grant became physically separated from the rest of the text). The Syrian Christians at Kollam preserved the first four plates (plates 1-4) and the Knanaya Syrian Christians at Mahodayapuram-Kodungallur held the last two plates (plates 5-6). The two plates at Kodungallur, generally called Thomas of Cana copper plates, were lost at some point in time.
The fourth plate at Kollam (4) was re-engraved onto two plates (4a and 4b) at a later date (and the original plate 4 was probably abandoned). The presently available interrupted plate is thus the first part (4a) of Plate 4. The modern transcripts of the inscription thus contain the lost portions from the second part (4b) of Plate 4.