418 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»<» S. YIII. Nov. 19. '59^ 



penny-a-liners of that time. The Post-Mem of April 20- 

 22, 1710, informs us, that "The four Indian kings, or 

 chiefe, of the five nations of Indians lying between New 

 England, New York, Canada, or New France, who ar- 

 rived here some days ago, had on Wednesday last their 

 public audience of Her Majesty in great cei-emony, 

 being conducted thereunto in two of Her Majesty's 

 coaches by Sir Charles Cotterel, Master of the Ceremonies. 

 They went yesterday to Greenwich, and were entertained 

 on board one of Her Majesty's yachts." They sailed from 

 Plymouth in the " Dragon^" on May 7, 1710.] 



Prince Ruperfs Arms and Crest — Can you 

 favour me with the arms and crest of Prince Ru- 

 pert ? T. II. Bbiggs. 



[Arms, quarterly; 1st and 4th sa. a lion rampant or; 

 2nd and 3rd paly bendy arg. and az. — Heylyn's Help to 

 English History, ed. 1773, p. 212. No crest is given.] 



MALABAR JEWS. 



(2°« S. iv. 429. ; viii. 232.) 



Vols. vi. and ix. of the Works, published by the 

 Zealand Society of Sciences, are now before me : 

 but the fulness of matter, treated in 's Grave- 

 zande's Disquisitions, precludes me from giving 

 anything like an extract. I must limit myself 

 to the correction of such errors concerning the 

 Malabar Jews as, through misinformation, have 

 appeared in your pages. 



Hamilton says that this Jewish community — 



" Have a synagogue at Couchin, not far from the king's 

 palace, about two miles from the city, in which are care- 

 fully kept their records, engraven on copper plates in 

 Hebrew characters; and when any of the characters 

 decay, they are new cut, so that they can show their 

 own history from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar to the 

 present time." 



This is not the case. The Jews residing in 

 Cochim already in the year 1686, had but a very 

 confused notion of their own history, and this 

 because the plundering Portuguese of 1662 had 

 made away with the book named The Book of 

 the Upright (not that of Jasher, Joshua x. 13.^ 

 2 Sam. i. 18., but Sepher Haynsar), in which also 

 was written from whence " the last great multi- 

 tude of people descended, that came over in the 

 4250th year of the Creation," a.b. 489. The 

 copper plates Hamilton refers to are the letters 

 patent, in which regal privileges were granted to 

 Joseph Rabby by the Malabar emperor Erawi 

 Manwara. In Moens's (not Moonis's) time this 

 piece of antiquity, of which a facsimile is given in 

 the Works of the Zealand Society (vol. vi. facing 

 p. 540.), was kept in the synagogue of the White 

 Jews, a quarter of an hour's walk from Cochim. 

 The j>atent is neither written in Hebrew, nor in 

 Hebrew characters ; these, as well as the lan- 

 guage, are a mixture of the old Malabar, the 

 Tamul, and the Tulingan tongues. 



Hamilton's account of brass chronicles of the 

 Malabar Jews induced Mr. John Collet, of New- 

 bury in Berkshire, to address himself by two 

 letters, of June 24th, 1753, and Jan. i2th, 1754, 

 to his old Lejden friend and college»fello\v Mr. 

 Job Raster at Zierikzee, requesting him to have 

 inquiries made from Zealand regarding the Jews 

 residing at Cochim. To these letters he, in 1754, 

 added a third, written in Hebrew, and with an 

 English translation appended, which he wanted to 

 be forwarded to the Jews aforesaid. As, how- 

 ever, to this letter no reply was given, Mr. A. 

 's Gravezande, some twenty years later, translated 

 the English version of the same into Dutch, and 

 had it taken to Cochim, with some questions ex- 

 tracted from Collet's correspondence. The effects 

 of this epistle were remarkable; 's Gravezande 

 tells us (/. c. vi. p. 586.) : — 



" It is a fact worthy of notice, that as Mr. Moens (the 

 then Governor of Malabar), distinctly and in an affecting 

 manner read the letter, I mentioned to the most distin- 

 guished Jews of Cochim, whom he had assembled for tha 

 purpose, and had come to the part which regarded the 

 promise of their deliverance and restitution, they all, 

 partly from joy and partlj' from emotion, began to cry so 

 bitterly, that the reader himself was at great pains to 

 keep his countenance. It indeed is hard to say what 

 signs of agitation were to be read from their features. 

 So much so, that when the lecture Avas over they wrung 

 their hands and looked each other in the iiice with con- 

 fusion, continually uttering their joy for the letter which 

 Collet had written." 



'S Gravezande concludes with th« prayer,. — 



"Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Ziont 

 When God bringeth back the captivity of His people, 

 Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad." — Ps. liii. 6. 



A somewhat similar scene was witnessed by Mr. 

 Moens on October the 15th, 1779, subsequently 

 to his public lecture of 's Gravezande's Historical 

 Account (Geschiedkundige Nariehten) to members 

 of the same Cochim community : — 



"After having said that he had presented the JewisBr 

 Synagogue in that place with the imprint of the copper 

 plates, Moens thus proceeds ; — 



" ' I, at the same time, intended to give them a tran- 

 script of your Rev.'s Account, but wanted first to try 

 whether they should not desire this out of their own 

 accord. For that reason I read it at my house to the 

 most notable of them, and explained it as clearly as pos- 

 sible — and I had the satisfaction to see that they, as it 

 were, gaped the words out of my mouth ; that some of 

 them surrounded me and nearly crushed me, in order to 

 look into the work itself, and that sundry others, with a 

 faint murmur, now rubbing and then lifting np their 

 hands, were engaged in a very animated conversation: 

 and I must confess that I was" greatly moved by their 

 doings. When they had thus heard everything, and I, in 

 my way, had still addressed a few cordial words to the 

 meeting, reminding them, by the bye, of what is said in 

 Hosea iii. 4, 5 *, they partly began to weep and partly to 

 sob, in which condition they took their leave.' 



* " For the children of Israel shall abide many days 

 without a king, and without a prince, and without a 

 sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, 

 and without teraphim. 



