The Sons of Israel

[Cora Giantkiller]

Queen Ester and the House of Haman (1000 - 1104)

Then the king Ahasuerus said unto Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have hanged upon the gallows, because he laid his hand upon the Jews.

-Esther 8:7

The Kochinim date their origins to the arrival of Jewish settlers following the destruction of the First Temple during the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. By the end of the First Jewish-Roman War in 70 CE and the destruction of the Second Temple, numerous Jewish settlers were finding a home on the Malabar coast. There the Jewish people intermingled with their Deccan neighbors, forming a distinctive Indo-Hebraic language and customs while maintaining their traditional faith.

In 1000 CE, the Raj of Chera Nadu granted hereditary aristocratic privileges to a merchant, Joseph Rabban, who was to serve as an intermediary between the Tamil Hindu raj and his Jewish subjects. Rabban’s life and death are obscure, but by 1050 the wealthy merchant Barukh Dharan, claiming descent from Rabban, held his hereditary privileges among the Kochinim. Dharan was a shrewd political operator, using his position to achieve control over the trading city of Kollam and eventually the title of Samanta (literally, a vassal chief) of Venadu. The formidable Barukh died in the late 1060s, leaving an untested young woman as leader of the Cochin Jews.

The Kochinim must have been concerned, for the political currents at work in the Malabar coast were complex. Many of the Tamil nobility felt that Barukh Dharan had rather got above his station, and were eager to find a way to cut his daughter down to size. The issue was naturally religion–many around Raja Irȃcȃtitta Chera were convinced that the Dharans would need to abandon the faith of their fathers, and thus they began to intrigue ways to make this occur.

Meanwhile, the neighboring kingdom of Chola was aflame thanks to the rebellion of Raja Vijayabahu. The Sinhalese Buddhist noble had assumed rulership of the principality of Ruhana in 1055, and from that base he waged war on the Chola maharaja for more than twenty years before liberating Sri Lanka. This bloody conflict would pull in all of Chola’s neighbors, either for opportunism or necessity, until it became a multifaceted regional war with Hindus, Buddhists, and Cochin Jews on both sides.

If there was a hopeful sign, and this was indeed slim, it was in the young girl’s name. Ester Dharan was named for the Persian queen, who had won the support of King Xerxes to protect her people from their many enemies. Ester was born late in Barukh’s life, when it was clear that she would need to succeed him. It was hoped that she could handle the rajas as ably as her namesake had the Persians. That was the only chance that the Kochinim had.

From her early girlhood days, Ester was a creature of her father's court. It would be said, much later, that she learned to politick before she learned to walk. Certainly from an early age, she was able to cultivate a gregarious, likable personality that disguised her shrewd political instincts. The Jews could not have too many powerful friends, she reasoned.

At first, she was determined to cultivate the good opinion of her liege, Raja Irȃcȃtitta. She sought the old man’s advice on all things, and it was said that he began to look upon her as a daughter. When her armies claimed the Maldives for her upon her twenty-first birthday, Ester wrote to the raja that his banner would soon fly over the islands that her armies had won only thanks to his strategic insights. The political message was not subtle, nor was it intended to be.

When the Samanta of Eranad rose up against Raja Irȃcȃtitta, Ester was quick to pledge her men to the raja’s cause–and for her trouble she suffered a brutal defeat before the walls of Calicut. The rebellion ended inconclusively in early 1073, however, and soon she found a new cause: fighting alongside her liege to support the Sinhalese in their rebellion against the Chola kings. The Cochin army, under Ester’s personal command, marched to Sri Lanka to assist in the final years of the war. There she struck up a valuable friendship with the rebellious noble Vijayabahu, culminating in a strategic betrothal between her eldest son Barukh and his young daughter Kandasika.

Although Ester would stand among the victors in the Sinhalese Rebellion, her political fortunes at home were quickly deteriorating. Irȃcȃtitta was approaching his dotage, and as his force of personality declined, the opponents of the Kochinim rose in ascendance. The eldery raja was prevailed upon to invite Ester’s son, Barukh, to his palace to be educated as a proper Hindu noble. When Ester sent back an evasive reply, Irȃcȃtitta was persuaded that his samanta was scheming rebellion with the assistance of the Sinhalese. This perfidious woman could not be trusted to retain her land and titles.

When a palace emissary arrived at Kollam to demand Ester surrender her lands, she was well and truly shocked. While she played for time, the shorveer Elifalet Nehemya was sent to Sri Lanka to beg the support of the Sinhalese. Raja Vijayabahu’s support was swift, and soon Irȃcȃtitta had the very rebellion that he had feared. The Sinhalese/Kochinim alliance was two powerful for the raj, handily defeating Chera armies in Eranad and Vizhinjam before putting the capital under siege. When the capital fell in May, 1078, a triumphant Ester demanded the abdication of Irȃcȃtitta in favor of his five year old daughter, Mariamma.

The betrayal of the Cheras proved a valuable lesson for the young samarata. She would not rely so heavily on the munificence of one man in the future, choosing instead to cultivate a variety of allies in order to preserve as many options as possible for herself and her people. She would ensure a much larger powerbase for herself as well, since even the most sophisticated political strategy could fail.

In 1079, she expelled the Tamil noble in Calicut and added to her list of titles Samarata of Eranad. By 1082, she had pushed the nine-year-old Mariamma aside and named herself Rani of Chera Nadu. From that position of strength, she negotiated a treaty of vassalization with the Chola maharaja that protected the faith of the Kochinim in exchange for larger levies. The maharaja was only too happy to oblige. Ester would become close friends with the Chola maharaja Mȃmpȃkkamutaiyȃn, yes, but also with his ever-rebellious vassal the Pandya Raj, as well as the formidable Sinhalese raja. These three men were powerful rivals, but Ester was able to play them all off of each other while retaining the goodwill of each.

Ester also began to increase the power of the Kochinim within her raj as well. The former Rani Mariamma and the young Samanta Ramakuta of Kolathunad were bound to her dynasty through marriages, and soon both were following the teachings of the Torah as well. As a result, Chera Nadu was safe from rebellion for two generations. Samanta Ramakuta would become one of the great sages of 11th century Judaism, in fact, and an important source of inspiration for the scholar Maimonides.

With her powerbase secure, Mahasamanta Ester began to turn her own thoughts to the Torah and to strengthening the faith of her people. A journey to visit the synagogues of Kerala left her deep in thought. The Kochinim were flourishing in Chera Nadu, to be sure, but in the north she heard many troubling tales of harassment and violence at the hands of the Devagiri crown. When she learned that the elderly Maharaja Jayasimha had passed, she knew that the time was right to launch an invasion northward to protect her fellow Jews.

In retaliation, the young Devagiri maharaja ordered an immediate assault on Kollam, hoping to stop the Dharan army before their allies could gather. Instead, the Devagiri found themselves trapped between a Dharan anvil and a Pandya hammer, and the defending army was quickly routed. For the rest of the war, Ester would be on the offensive, and by 1103 Kerala was also in her hands.

With the liberation of the Jews of Kerala, Ester was able to sacralize her power in a new way. Her court officials argued that Ester was no mere king but a leader called by Hashem in the manner of Moses and Joshua. She hoped to marry sacred and secular power into a single office, the office of Nasi–head of the High Priesthood.

1104 also witnessed another development, whose importance would only become apparent in hindsight. With the Devagiri monarchy in deep decline, Ester marched north again to force the vassalization of one Yesubai Thana Silahara, a fierce Marathi warrior woman who would prove the most formidable of Ester’s allies. Ester plied Samanta Yesubai with gold, added her the council, and obliged her to adopt the Torah; and in return Yesubai waited, with quiet determination, for her chance to strike again.

1104 was in many ways the high point of Ester’s power. She had risen further than anybody could have expected, even by the standards of her formidable father; established the freedom of worship for the Kochinim Jews and re-established a Jewish high priesthood for the first time in a thousand years; all while ruling some of the most prosperous trading cities in India. It was an astonishing display of power, one that it would be hard for her successors to match.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Give Us A King (1133 - 1151)

When thou art come unto the land which HaShem thy G-d giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein; and shalt say: 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are round about me'; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom HaShem thy G-d shall choose; one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, who is not thy brother.

Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses; forasmuch as HaShem hath said unto you: 'Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.' Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

D’varim (Deutoronomy) 17:14-17

The rapid collapse of Ester’s domain alarmed many of the Kochinim, and in particular Ester’s sole living son, Anangpal. He had been ignored for the succession, but retained significant influence in Chera Nadu by virtue of his marriage to the late Mariamma Chera, former rani and daughter of the ancient Chera line of Tamil kings. By now, two of his sons were rulers of powerful trading cities and substantial nobles in their own right. When word arrived that Levi had been deposed, Anangpal gathered his sons together to decide how to save the dynasty from its enemies.

The conspirators were clear that leaving a baby as Raja and High Priest was a cruel joke. They bore Barukh no ill will, but the Kochinim needed a strong ruler to protect them from the interference of the goyim. Nor could Anangpal take his place, for the will of Ester was well known in that matter. So it followed therefore that one of Anangpal’s sons, claiming lineage from both the old Chera dynasty and the new Dharan dynasty, would need to assume the mantle of raja.

Anangpal’s eldest two sons were both men of formidable talent. Kulôttunka, Samanta of Vembanad, was deeply pious and respected for his many charitable endeavors, although his haughtiness could alienate potential allies. Vicayȃlaya, Samanta of Kolathunad, was lax in his practice of the mitzvot, but skilled in matters of secular administration. Vicayȃlaya could claim the allegiance of the shorveers while the devout backed Kulôttunka, and here the matter apparently stalled.

And so things remained for some months, long enough for Barukh’s courtiers to hope that they might play one faction off another until their Nasi came of age. When the dam finally broke, it was for a third man: Irȃcȃtitta, the quiet, plain-spoken youngest son of Anangpal, who had the advantage of being neither arrogant nor irreligious, a man with no enemies if relatively few friends.

Once Anangpal placed his weight behind Irȃcȃtitta, the uprising against Barukh began. The fate of the child raja was clear from the start–the nobility was better organized, better led, and better manned than Barukh’s meager court. The regent accordingly spirited his charge out of the capital to Sri Lanka, abandoning the field to Irȃcȃtitta and his allies.

With Barukh’s secular authority usurped, many hoped that Irȃcȃtitta would prove to be a weak raja, obliged by the circumstances of his ascension to attend closely to his nobility. This view would prove deeply mistaken.

Barukh and his small court would eventually take up residence in Anandapura, guests of the Vijayabahu kingdom in Sri Lanka. There Barukh grew up and eventually came of age, and there he would agitate for a Lankan army to help him reclaim the lands he had lost. His efforts proved fruitless, however. The maharaja of Sri Lanka was found of Barukh and held old family ties to the Dharans, but he had little appetite for tangling in the politics of the Chola kingdom.

As a result, in the late 1140s Irȃcȃtitta would formally re-establish peace with his cousin, Barukh. In a brief written document, Irȃcȃtitta formally ceded to Barukh the high priesthood, in exchange for an oath to forswear the lands of Chera Nadu and Konkana. The concession may seem surprising but in truth Irȃcȃtitta was happy to give the priestly title up.

Irȃcȃtitta may have claimed Barukh’s titles, but in a pointed decision, he did not himself take the title of Nasi. He was raised in his father’s household as a Tamil princeling as well as a Jew, and he modeled his ambitions off of the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms around him, not the ancient kings of Israel. As a result, the narrow sectarian appeal of the high priesthood held little appeal for him. The politics of the peoples of India was what mattered most.

This decision would have long-lasting consequences. The priesthood would remain in Barukh’s line, and while they would eventually regain some landed power, primarily their influence was felt in the synagogues rather than the court. Barukh and his successors would tend towards strict observance of the mitzvot and maintaining a proper distance from goyim.

The secular authority, meanwhile, would largely adopt Irȃcȃtitta’s assimilationist mindset, gathering around them a collection of ‘court rabbis’ who were reformist in their approach to Jewish practice and royalist in their politics. This division between throne and temple would remain through the history of the Kochinim.

Mahasamanta Irȃcȃtitta II had held the capital for perhaps six weeks when he made his first move to power. He was clear that divisions among the Jewish people of Cochin were responsible for the current crisis of leadership, and so he issued curt orders insisting that all hereditary titles, including those of his brothers, were to be relinquished to the raja. Vicayȃlaya agreed immediately, while sustained pressure was needed to convince Kulôttunka to submit to his younger brother’s wishes. However, the lands (and more importantly, the revenues) were granted to Irȃcȃtitta without bloodshed, the first important victory of his rule.

Irȃcȃtitta’s next goal was clear–reclaiming the northern lands of Konkana from the hated Mahasamanta Yesubai. After establishing strong allies in Sri Lanka, Irȃcȃtitta declared for Konkana in 1136. However, Yesubai had not survived in politics for so long because she was foolish. She moved against the Jewish army quickly and savagely, slaughtering Irȃcȃtitta’s forces nearly to a man before the Lanka army could arrive on the field. Once there, she invested the capital and forced a quick end to the war.

What followed was the lowest moment of Irȃcȃtitta’s reign. In the same year, his eldest son died in infancy after a long bout of fever. He was weakened, grieving and humiliated, and had he not purged the nobility already it is highly likely that one of his brothers would have taken his throne. However, his internal opponents were weakened and thus Irȃcȃtitta was able to plot his next move.

Irȃcȃtitta’s fortunes began to change with two crucial events: first, the death of Mahasamanta Yesubai in 1141, which left Konkana in the hands of her daughter, the mediocre Deepabai. Second, the death of the Chola king later that year, which left Bolla as Maharaja and his brother the Rajkumar Munnurůvappattan burning with frustrated ambition. The two Chola princes were equally matched in skill and manpower, and the resulting civil war bled them both dry.

With the Chola kingdom fatally weakened, Irȃcȃtitta declared the independence of the Jewish lands from their erstwhile masters. The maharaja naturally balked, but with his forces occupied fighting against the Rajkumar, there was little he could do but watch as the Kochinim marched on his capital and forced the issue. In 1144, Irȃcȃtitta was formally independent.

A shrewd Kochin diplomat undermined the truce between Irȃcȃtitta and the Chola king in 1146, which opened the way for a second war, to finally reclaim Konkana for the Dharan dynasty and re-unify the lands that Ester had held. With the Chola civil war still raging, this war was nearly as swift as the one before.

By the late 1140s, Irȃcȃtitta had restored the lands of his grandmother. However, unlike Ester he had no intention of maintaining his influence as vassal to a more powerful liege. He meant to establish a kingdom for the Kochinim, equal to the kingdoms in Tamilkam and Lanka, with himself as king. As Nasi, Barukh Dharan would happily sanctify this kingdom. His only price was this: that it be a Jewish kingdom, first and foremost.

And so it was that Irȃcȃtitta was crowned by the young man that he deposed, on the day after Yom Kippur, 1151, before a crowd of priests and shorveers, merchants and diplomats. He would be the King of the Bene-Israel, literally the king of the sons of Israel. For the first time since the fall of Judea, there would be an independent kingdom for the Jews.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

God of the Earth Below (1151 - 1176)

And [Rahav] said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.

Yehoshua (Joshua) 2:9-11

Irȃcȃtitta scarcely had time to sit on his new throne before he launched a new campaign of conquest, setting the tone for the remainder of his reign. The frailty of his new Jewish realm was foremost on his mind, and thus he felt the need to capitalize on the moments of opportunities as they came lest they never come again.

And so in the fall of 1152, he rode forth to claim Madurai from the faltering Chola kingdom. Initially the war went well, with a massive victory for Bene-Israel at Kottayam in 1153. However, Irȃcȃtitta if anything had done too well. Those nobles backing rebel prince Munnurůvappattan became convinced that extended civil war had only empowered the kingdom’s enemies. Rajkumar Munnurůvappattan was abruptly assassinated by his own generals, who went back into the fold. With Maharaja Bolla thus empowered, the Bene-Israelites were dramatically outnumbered for the first time and Irȃcȃtitta hastily made a truce.

Shortly after the truce with the Chola, Irȃcȃtitta was at war again, this time with the Vijayabahu kingdom in Lanka. Thanks to the charisma of Nasi Barukh, Judaism had gained many new followers in the raj of Maya. Tensions were rife between the Kochinism and these new Sinhala-speaking converts, as well as between the Jews and the Buddhist establishment. These tensions would, too often, spark street violence as rival communities jockeyed to assert their own legitimacy.

A riot in Kotte late in 1153 prompted the intervention of the royal army, which gave Irȃcȃtitta an excuse to intervene and protect the Jewish population there. Learning his lessons from the failures of the last campaign. Irȃcȃtitta moved immediately for the Vijayabahu capital and watched with satisfaction as the walls of Andrapahura crumbled before him. After declaring victory in the spring of 1155, Irȃcȃtitta placed his cousin Avigayil in control of the new raj. However, in practice the dominant force there would be Barukh and the priestly hierarchy that had grown around him.

The final conquest took place in 1165. Bolla I had struggled manfully to re-establish the dominance of the Chola kingdom after the death of his brother, but after his death dynastic tensions arose once more. The eldest son, Karaikkiyemarrayilaiyȃn, claimed the throne, while his younger brother Poranti fled to Kollam and pledged his willingness to convert to Judaism if the Bene-Israelites would place him on his brother’s throne.

Irȃcȃtitta was not about to place Poranti on the throne of Tamilkam, fearing the possibility that he or his descendants would make a bid for leadership of the Jewish people. Instead, he offered to install Poranti as duke of Chola Nadu, which would keep Poranti as a vassal to Kollam while splitting the Tamil kingdom in two. Poranti, who feared assassination if he left the protection of the king, readily agreed with this plan.

Irȃcȃtitta marched east in August, 1165. Many in the court boasted that he would defeat the Chola maharaja by the new year (that is, Rosh Hashanah, which was in six weeks’ time). This was presumptuous, but not by much. The new maharaja was weak and led his army to a rout at Tirukoilur in late October. By the following summer, the Tamil capital of Tanjavur had fallen to Bene-Israel and Polanti had sailed to take up residence in his brother’s capital. Chola’s surrender was not long in coming.

While Irȃcȃtitta was basking in triumph on the battlefield, life at court proved far more challenging. We don’t know much about internal resistance to Irȃcȃtitta among the Jewish population, but we know that something of the sort must have existed; we have records of an assassination attempt agaisnt the king in the city of Udupi, which according to legend was committed by means of a poisoned Masala dosa. The perpetrator, Malnathadeva, was a Jewish merchant who had risen to the rank of damapati in the city of Udupi. For his crime, Malnathadeva would be exiled to the Devagiri kingdom and his assets given to the local rabbinate. From there the would-be assassin disappears from the historical record.

More challenging still was the travails of the Dharan princes. Prince Irȃcȃtitta was a shy youth, and while he resembled his father in that, the young Irȃcȃtitta lacked his father’s candor almost entirely. He was instead furtive and sly, inspiring distrust and prompting courtiers to compare him to Ester’s fratricidal son Barukh (although not where his father could hear). The king was indulgent and protective of his sons, all the more so once his second son Menachem was killed in battle against the Devagiri kingdom in 1064. He remarked frequently that he believed his eldest son would ‘grow into’ the throne, which was supportive if hardly a vote of confidence.

However, the comparisons with Prince Barukh seemed horribly apt when, during a hunt in 1169, the younger Irȃcȃtitta was seen assaulting and murdering a young peasant woman. King Irȃcȃtitta was horrified, but conscious of the lessons of Ester’s rule, he moved quickly: the prince was disinherited promptly and joined Malnathadeva in exile. Prince Irȃcȃtitta would die in Delhi the following year.

With Prince Irȃcȃtitta exiled and Menachem dead, the succession now fell to the king’s youngest, Prince Yehudi. Yehudi had a gift for charming his tutors through hard work and patience, and his athletics and prowess with a blade led many to conclude that he would be a formidable warrior–one day. He was, in 1169, nine years old.
King Irȃcȃtitta wasn’t overly bothered by this, believing himself to be the very model of health and expecting to live to see his youngest reach the age of majority. The prince was to attend to his studies and his martial training, while also beginning to attend council meetings and ride out with his father to visit outlying holdings. The diligent young man threw himself into his new responsibilities, with perhaps too little care for his own frailties.

Contrary to his own expectation, King Irȃcȃtitta was stricken by a winter fever in the beginning of January 1172. His condition deteriorated quickly, and by January 6 the first king of the Jews in so many centuries had passed away. Twelve year old Yehudi was crowned the new king shortly before the holiday of Purim that year. Just before the ceremony, the young king was characteristically injured from pushing himself too hard during martial training the day before.

If Irȃcȃtitta had been wrong in believing that he would live to see his youngest become a man, conditions in Bene-Israel nonetheless seemed good. Yehudi’s regent announced a new war against the Chola, to claim Madurai and the other lands traditionally held by the Pandya kings. By now the Bene-Israelites dramatically outnumbered their Chola rivals and the outcome was scarcely in doubt; and so Madurai was in fact in Jewish hands by Rosh Hashanah this time.

With the ancient lands of the old Tamil dynasties now in the hands of Bene-Israel, Yehudi was crowned as king of the Tamils as well as the Kochinim. Prince Yehudi even turned the same charm that won over a dozen tutors to good effect, convincing the former maharaja, Karaikkiyemarrayilaiyȃn, to bend the knee to Kollam and follow the teachings of the Torah.

In August, 1175, King Yehudi officially came of age and successfully took rulership of the kingdom under his own name. By now his charm was famous within the kingdom and without. Not since Ester had a Jewish leader shown this much skill in court, and been beloved by his enemies as much as his friends. The days ahead were surely bright.

However, Yehudi continued to struggle with a series of injuries gained by his own overzealous efforts on the training fields, and in the fall of 1175 his recovery became complicated when he developed pneumonia. Elkanah, rabbi and court physician, immediately began to bleed the young king to cleanse him of ill humors, but this did far more harm than good. By the time Elkanah’s incompetence was caught, King Yehudi was disfigured and dying.

When the youth died in December 12, 1175, the court was shocked and alarmed. Irȃcȃtitta’s sons were all dead, leaving the kingdom properly in the hands of Irȃcȃtitta’s daughter Konchani. Konchani was twenty-nine and accomplished, but she had married the Hindu maharaja of the Pala kingdom more than a decade ago in order to secure Irȃcȃtitta’s alliances in the north and born this goyish king a son. Would she simply be the cats-paw of this Hindu king, or would she champion her own people and the God of Abraham and Isaac? Only time would tell.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Stranger in a Strange Land (1176 - 1224)

If a man have two wives, the one beloved, and the other hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the first-born son be hers that was hated; then it shall be, in the day that he causeth his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved the first-born before the son of the hated, who is the first-born; but he shall acknowledge the first-born, the son of the hated, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath; for he is the first-fruits of his strength, the right of the first-born is his.

D’varim (Deutoronomy) 21:15-17

Kanchani left the city of Ujjayini under cover of darkness, accompanied by a handful of guards and two ladies-in-waiting, to return to the Bene-Israelite in Kollam. She left behind her an outraged husband, the Maharaja Ladahachandra of Pala, and a distraught eight year old son, Bhagabhadra. Within a month she would assume the throne as queen of the Jewish people, arrange a hasty get (religious divorce) from her royal husband, and announce her forthcoming wedding to a princeling from the Cedi Kingdom. For all official purposes, it would be as if the last thirteen years of her life had never happened.

Of course things were not so simple. Labahachandra was furious, and the religious significance of the get was wholly lost on him–he simply regarded Kanchani as an adulteress and a bigamist. The young prince Bhagabhadra had more complex, even confused feelings, lurching between reverence for his missing mother and fury at her disappearance.

Queen Kanchani’s feelings were also apparently complex, although she dared not acknowledge them as queen. It was said many years later that she pleaded to be given her son, on that day that she fled from Ujjayini, and was refused by a suspicious court official. She had, apparently, been dragged away from the nursery door by her guards, screaming and cursing, and only left once it was clear that she might not otherwise be permitted to return to Bene-Israel. Still, when her next son was born, with the pointedly Hebrew name Avraham, he was referred to in all court documents as the queen’s firstborn son, and woe be it to those who pointed out the truth.

When he attained his majority, the Rajkumar Bhagabhadra arrived in Kollam to confer with his mother, sending the Bene-Israelite court into a minor uproar about protocol and diplomatic niceties. He was not there out of love for his mother, to be sure, but out of ambition, having gathered commitments from several Pala thakurs to support him in his claim for the kingdom of Orissa and hoping for her own support as well. He was now willing to play on her sense of maternal guilt to accomplish this goal too.

Kanchani was inclined to agree, believing that in this fashion Bhagabhadra would be mollified and not inclined to pursue any claims against Bene-Israel itself. She further noted that the maharaja, known as Kottabhanja ‘the Bully’, had acquired many enemies within his kingdom would longed for a replacement. The nobility balked at shedding Jewish lives for a goyish king’s ambition, however, and demanded that Bhagabhadra adopt the Jewish faith as a prerequisite for any support.

The young prince agreed to be circumcised so easily that it seems that he did not quite understand what the ritual consisted of. In any case, the alacrity with which he adopted the ways of his mother’s people suggested either that he needed her approval that desperately or that he was utterly indifferent in matters of religion. Perhaps a mixture of both things was the case.

War would be joined after the High Holy Days in 1184, with a successful incursion up the eastern coast of India and a massive rout for the Orissans at Khinjali Mandala. Rajkumar Bhagabhadra managed to escape any of the heavy fighting, but was sure to be present for the glorious procession into the Orissan capital of Katak on January 4, 1186. To a cheering ground of Bene-Israelite soldiers he announced the second kingdom of the Jews, in a land where the Jewish people had never flourished before.

Bhagabhadra did not take the faith of his mother terribly seriously, nor did he ever give up his claim to inherit the throne of Bene-Israel as his mother hoped that he would. And yet against all odds this cynical enterprise produced a thriving Jewish dynasty in northeastern India that would spread over most of Bengal. The Jewish Pala kings in Orissa would stay in power for centuries longer than the Hindu Pala kings to their west. In days to come, rabbis would consider this tale and ponder the words of Isaiah, that the ways of Hashem were not our ways after all.

King Irȃcȃtitta had been an assimilationist Jew by nature, and he saw Bene-Israel not as a kingdom for the Jews exclusively but an Indian kingdom where the nobility practiced the faith of Abraham. Kanchani had actually served in a Hindu court so she took this vision still further, hoping to protecting the Jews of Bene-Israel by integrating them into the diverse population of the Deccan Plateau.

This attempt took several forms. First, court propaganda presented her as an heir to the Tamil kings of old. For millennia, the Tamil people were ruled by three great dynasties, the Chola, the Chera, and the Pandya; and Kanchani could cite her descent from the Cheras while working closely with the deposed Chola king, Karaikkiyemarrayilaiyȃn, whom she placed in charge of her armies.

However, she also made efforts to reach out to the other peoples of her land: the Sinhala in Lanka, the Telugu in the northeast, and the Marathi on the northern Malabar coast. She continued her father’s policy of territorial expansion both in Karnata to her north and Lanka to her south; but accompanied these conquests with attempts to integrate the nobility of the conquered lands with the Bene-Israelite nobles.

By the beginning of the 13th century, historians can identify a cosmopolitan ‘Judean’ culture of the realm, at least among its elites. The Jyudiyana language was a mixture of Marathi and Tamil, but with numerous loan words from Hebrew and written from right to left in Hebrew characters. Traditionally, the rise of this new culture is identified as 1196, when court documents stop identifying Kanchani as ‘malka’ (queen, in Hebrew) and begin to refer to her as Maharani Kanchani the Huntress.

This culture was closely associated with the Jewish faith, at least as practiced on the Malabari coast. It was more reformist in some ways, integrating more local customs into Jewish ritual and less insistent on strict observance of the mitzvot. Malabari Judaism was the product of diverse trading cities and its adherents were socially integrated with Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, and Christians, while maintaining their own distinctive sense of themselves. They would give to Bene-Israel its relatively tolerant official posture towards other religions.

(In Lanka, by contrast, Jewish practice was influenced both by the presence of the Nasi in Andrahapudra and by repeated conflicts with the Buddhist power structure. There Jewish practice was more self-consciously orthodox and exclusionary, which led to repeated sectarian tensions between court and temple.)

By the rise of the 13th century, it became clear that the succession issue was not going away. Maharani Kanchani was well into her fifties then, and while her son Avraham cut a fine figure rumors remained about his lack of personal courage. Exacerbating matters, Bhagabhadra was cultivating allies in Bene-Israel claiming that under existing law, Kanchani’s kingdom should be divided when she died, with the western, more distinctly Jewish half going to Avraham as the kingdom of Bene-Israel and the eastern half going to Bhagabhadra as the kingdom of Tamilakam.

Bhagabhadra’s argument was not without merit given the current practices of the Indian kingdoms, and as a powerful monarch in his own right he had plenty of muscle to place behind it. As often happens, Kanchani’s attempts to mollify her estranged eldest son had only encouraged him and made him far more dangerous. The maharaja Bhagabhadra was able to line up substantial support for his claims among the Tamil nobility in the east, while the nobles of the Malabari coast were quick to side with Avraham.

The situation was quickly becoming dire, promising a bloody civil war after the maharani’s death. Kanchani responded first by insisting that Avraham take a more assertive role in court affairs, sensing that doubts about his fitness were the primary cause of the current troubles. As Avraham found more courage within himself than anybody had expected, his next task was to cultivate the Tamil nobility.

Chief among the Tamil nobles was the strapping young mahasamanta, Bolla II of Chola Nadu. He was a proud scion of an ancient family, with a tender ego and a fondness for living like a king if he could not in fact reign. As a result, the local synagogues knew to offer him a little of the poor fund and pay his workmen for their building renovations. Bhagabhadra was quite happy to bribe Bolla II, but Avraham quickly discerned that only Kanchani could offer Bolla what he really wanted: respect.

So, to the private disgust of the rabbis of Chola Nadu, Kanchani threw a lavish feast for Bolla II and there she openly praised him for his piety, his royal nature, and kindness to widows and orphans. Bolla II beamed throughout the meal, and the following day he proposed a tribute in kind to his eminent maharani. It was the arrogance of Rehoboam, he said, that split the tribes of Israel one from another in times of old, and Bene-Israel would be fatally weakened if they followed that example.

In this fashion the Bene-Israelite law of primogeniture was passed, naming Avraham the sole heir to both kingdoms. On the maharani’s insistence, it further stipulated that future inheritance would devolve to the eldest child ‘without division’, whether that child was male or female. Bhagabhadra’s scheming had been thwarted, and the future of the realm appeared secure.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

The Ways of the Queens (1224 - 1256)

And Samuel said to Saul: 'Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?' And Saul answered: 'I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and G-d is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams; therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.'

And Samuel said: `Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing HaShem is departed from thee, and is become thine adversary?

Shmuel I (Samuel I) 28:15&16

The successful resolution of the succession issue gave the maharani a new sense of confidence and ambition. Now at the age of 78, Kanchani began to plan out new military campaigns. Her confidence seemed almost like caprice: some courtiers claimed that she had a table map in the shape of India, and wherever her cat Dybbuk slept would mark the location of her next conquest.

Most significantly, she completed the conquest of Lanka and placed the island kingdom under her control. In 1225, the eight year old Tissa IV, heir to the Vijayabahu kingdom, kneeled before her and became a raj governing a mere third of his family’s lands. The young princeling would soon be circumcised as well and his education placed under the oversight of the Nasi.

It seemed that Bene-Israel was about to enter a new golden age, but the mood at court quickly shifted when news arrived that the Maharaja Bhagabhadra had died in a war against the Hindu nobility of Orissa. In death, Kanchani’s eldest son seemed to her blameless–one would scarcely credit, seeing how she mourned for him, that she had any concerns about him interfering in the succession.

Moreover, the throne of Orissa passed to Vajramitra Pala, who was hardly a forceful personality in the best of times and just then confined to his sickbed after receiving multiple wounds in the field. Judaism did not have deep roots among the Orissan population, and it seemed likely that the old Brahmin elite would return to power any day now.

The second tragedy Kanchani suffered is of less global consequence, but she felt it keenly. The mercurial Dybbuk died in the maharani’s lap late one night, and with the loss of her constant companion and her eldest child, Kanchani fell into a deep depression. She lived for another four years, her health declining and her once impressive grasp of court politics fading away. Finally, just before the high holy days in 1231, Maharani Kanchani the Huntress died at the age of 84.

Kanchani had struggled for most of her reign to put Avraham on the throne after her death, and expectations were naturally high when he was crowned. Once, decades ago, doubts had emerged that the other-wordly and rigorously observant Avraham held the courage to rule over the kingdom, but he had quashed those doubts by impressing courtiers with what they perceived to be his humility, piety, and strength of character.

This sterling reputation was sadly thoroughly undeserved, however. Avraham was a dissipated rake with a long history of personal indulgence, which he hid beneath a consistent and quite thorough-going hypocrisy. When he arrived on the throne at the age of fifty-four, however, his health was already slipping as years of drink, hashish, and less honorable indulgences caught up with him.

This is not to say that Avraham was only concerned with his own pleasure. He also had a strong vindictive streak, and indeed he spent most of his reign consumed in a struggle against his sister-in-law Thidar Candras. The origins of this rivalry are by now entirely obscure, but Avraham’s primary aim as maharaja lay in ensuring that Thidar reach a bloody end. After multiple failed attempts, Bene-Israelite assassins saw to it that Thidar died in a staged assault, laying the blame on bandits.

With Avraham involved in his own affairs, power in the realm devolved to his eldest daughter and heir, Shoshannah. She was mercurial in her own fashion, equally likely to be kind and open-handed or cruel, and as she grew older, it was said that she was possessed by a true dybbuk, a malicious spirit said to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. (The more dramatic tales claimed that this appeared to them as a black cat, drawing on memories of Kanchani’s impiously-named cat.)

Unlike her father, however, Shoshannah was ambitious for the realm and aligned herself closely with the more orthodox rabbis who were now defining Judaism in Lanka. She was particularly aligned with the young woman who was ascendant in the priesthood, the shrewd Sarah Dharan-Senkadagalapura, soon to be named Nasi. As pious courtiers bemoaned Avraham’s failings, they remained hopeful that the princess and the priestess would lead Bene-Israel into a new golden age.

Shoshannah and her nasi shared a vision of a Jewish empire that would incorporate all the chosen people in the subcontinent, extending from the Kochinim of the Malabar coast to the Bnei Menashe in Burma. This empire would, in her vision, dominate the Deccan plateau and be stronger than the goyish kingdoms in the north. While Avraham was still alive, she prevailed upon him to launch such a war of conquest, striking for Nulamvedi on the kingdom’s northern border. However, Avraham was never as interested in territorial expansion as his daughter would like. Her plans only came to fruition after his death in 1238.

She began in the west in 1240. Shoshannah had named herself queen of Karnata the previous year, and on this basis she attacked the ailing Devagiri kingdom to claim the taxes and levies of raj of Raichur Doab for Bene-Israel. After six months at war, the Raja Sripurusha Konganivariman bent the knee to her and agreed to be circumcised. By this point, her scribes were at work justifying a historical claim to Andhra.

The small kingdom of Andhra was then ruled by the aged Maharaja Rajanayaka of the Udayagiri dynasty, and as his health began to fail so too did his position in court. He had managed to put his kingdom deeply in debt and diplomatically isolated, leaving them vulnerable to invasion from the south. When war was finally joined in 1242, the overmatched Andhran army was slaughtered to a man in the first, devastating rout, leaving the kingdom prostrate before Shoshannah’s forces.

Flush with success from these early victories, the maharani was convinced to take on a more ambitious conquest, across the Bay of Bengal to Burma. There lived a small population of tribal peoples who claimed descent from a lost tribe of Israel and maintained a Jewish practice; from this seed, the maharani hoped to grow a powerful new Jewish population in addition to her own. And happily, her cousin Pandurangao could claim lands on the coast of Burma, citing his lineage from the murdered Thidar Candras.

The conquest of Arakan was easy enough, thanks to the might of the Bene-Israelite armies; the Burmese capital fell in late 1246 and following that the surrender was swift. However, establishing the rule of a foreign Jew in this unfamiliar land proved far more difficult. The deposed Buddhist nobility were hostile from the start, and before too long discontent became conspiracy, which metastasized into rebellion. Eighteen months after Panurangao had been installed, he was obliged to flee his palace with a small group of supporters and sail back for Kollam.

The new mahasamanta was far less cooperative with Shoshannah. Kyawswa Candras remembered well how the Dharan maharaja had murdered his sister Thidas. More important, he was a devout Buddhist with years of practice in a monastery, and while he might have overlooked the crimes against his family he would not renounce his personal practice.

Shoshannah regarded Kyawswa with contempt. When he stumbled through the Jyudiana language during his oath of fealty, she reacted with a sneer and began to call him ‘Kyawswa the Burmese.’ This was intended as an insult, highlighting that he was out of place in the court of Kollam, but Kyawswa reacted with defiance and became a hero in his native land.

Royal armies were sent to Burma several times to put down peasant rebellions in Arakan, typically led by local Buddhist clerics, while rumors continued to reach Kollam that Kyawswa was making alliances for a larger rebellion against the throne. Shoshannah’s reaction was swift–the rebellious monk must be killed. However, when Kyawswa died to an assassin’s blade in 1254, his nephew Narathu Candras took up the mantle of rebellion more openly than before.

Just when things seemed likely to spin out of control within Bene-Israel, however, Shoshannah abruptly died of a seizure. It is highly probable that she was poisoned, either from a supporter of the Candras dynasty or from another rival at court; we will never know because her son Irȃcȃtitta chose in the interest of peace not to investigate the death too closely, in hopes that he might spread oil over troubled waters. It was an act of mercy from Hashem, he told an intimate many years later, that his mother was spared from making yet another mistake.