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a third place till the day of judgment. Their priests were permitted 
to marry, at least once in their life. Their rite was the Chaldaean, 
or Syrian. 
“ The St. Thome, or Syrian Christians, never claimed the par- 
ticular protection of either the Portugueze or Dutch, which the 
new Christians generally do, hut considered themselves as subjects 
of the different rajahs in whose districts they lived; and, as long 
as the old Hindoo system, and the former division of the country, 
under a variety of petty rajahs, was preserved, they appear to have 
enjoyed the same degree of freedom, ease, and consideration, as 
the Nairs. But when the rajahs of Travencore and Cochin had 
subjected to themselves all the petty rajahs and chiefs, whose re- 
spective territories were situated within the lines of Travencore, 
they also overturned the whole political system established by 
Ciieruma Perumal; and by setting aside the immunities and 
privileges of the higher castes, they established a most oppressive 
despotism in the room of the former mild limited oligarchy; and 
we ought not to be much surprised to behold the present compa- 
ratively wretched situation of these Syrian villages, since we see 
the brahmins and Nairs stript of their old prerogatives, and subject 
to almost the same oppressions and extortions.” 
Dr. Claudius Buchanan, who visited the Syrian churches in 
1806, under the sanction of the Marquis Wellesley, confirms the 
preceding account, and has given an interesting and affecting de- 
tail of his reception by Mar Dionysius the bishop and the pastor 
of the Christian churches in Malabar: he describes the venerable 
metropolitan, at the age of seventy-eight, in his episcopal mitre 
and crozier, as a man of highly respectable character, eminent fc*r 
