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.
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.

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