By Verghese V Joseph –
A recent study connecting India’s southern Konkan Roman Catholics to Gaud Saraswat Brahmins (GSB) has thrown up some interesting debate. The study has also come up with another interesting linkage that could possibly point the Roman Catholics of the region, besides being a distinct ethno-linguistic population group, to the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Tradition has it that 12 tribes, who were said to have descended from the Patriarch Jacob, occupied the northern kingdom of Israel. Ten of these tribes — the Reuben, Gad, Zebulon, Simeon, Dan, Asher, Ephraim, Manasseh, Naphtali and Issachar — became known as the Lost Tribes of Israel when they disappeared after northern Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C. The fate of Israel’s 10 lost tribes, which were driven from ancient Palestine, ranks among history’s biggest mysteries.
Quotes from the Bible that refers to the Lost Tribes include: “And He said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee.” from 1 Kings 11:31 and “But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand, and will give it unto thee, even ten tribes.” from Kings 11:35.
The study ‘Dissecting the genetic history of the Roman Catholic population of West Coast India’ by researchers from CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad (CCMB) and DST-Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow has also found consequences of Portuguese inquisition in Goa on the population history of Roman Catholics. They also found some indication of Jewish component.
The research team led by Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, chief scientist, CCMB, & Director, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad and BSIP, collaborated with investigators from the Mangalore University, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and Institute of Advanced Materials, Sweden, took up the first such genetic study of the western India’s Roman Catholics.
It all began when Dr Kranti Farias, a Mumbai-based educationist and historian, was working on her hypothesis of Brahmin and Jewish ancestry in West Coast Catholics of Goa and Mangalore for many years. She is also an Academic Fellow, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Montreal, Toronto, Canada.
In October 2011, she attended the Triennial Conference of Church History Association of India (of which she is a past president) in Hyderabad. One of the paper presenters at the conference was the geneticist, Dr. Mini Kariappa, teaching at the Medical Mission Hospital in Kolenchery in Kochi, Kerala who presented a paper on Syrian Christians (Knayaya Christians ) and their affinity to Jews.
After her presentation on the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB and their work together, Dr Farias shared her interest and work done so far (since 2005) on the Indian Jews with a request to have support for her hypothesis on the Jewishness of the Goa / Mangalore Catholics.
Dr. Kariappa saw her passion for the subject, and she got the CCMB’s team present at the Conference venue to collect blood samples for her own study. Dr Farias was the first one to give blood for DNA testing. The results of Dr Farias DNA test classified her under the ‘West European’ and Haplogroup U1. This was the start of a great and close relationship of Dr Farias with CCMB who also confirmed Dr Farias ancestry. Incidentally, Dr Farias also has a family tree records on the same done by her maternal uncle, William X D Sequeira, (Retd) Dy. Teshildar of Karkala (South Kanara).
Once Dr Farias got Dr. K.Thangaraj, Senior Project Director CCMB interested in the study the next few months the team led by Dr. Niraj Rai and Dr. Anshuman Mishra and assisted by Satya Prakash worked closely with Dr Farias to plan an extensive outreach to collect blood samples from the west coast of India. The team visited Mangalore and Goa in 2014 and the same places again in 2018 with the addition of Kumta (in North Kanara). They accepted donors from the Roman Catholic Church community and non-Catholics from Catholic educational institutions.
They held presentations on Dr Farias hypothesis and the proposed research. Dr Farias gave the audience a PPT lecture on Mangalore Catholics and their Saraswat Brahmin origins. She spoke of oral tradition of the people as being a Central Asian people, their migration into India (about 2000 BCE, exact date not known) , and their settling down on the banks of the great Saraswati River in the Punjab and in Tirhoot . Thereafter in the 12th Century, their migration from the Saraswati basin, some to Tirhoot (in Bihar), Gaur (in Bengal) and the largest group going southwards to Gomantak (Goa), due to the great famine in the area and other natural disasters. Those who went to Goa continued to live as Saraswat Brahmins in what was Dravidian / and Muslim overlords’ country till the 16th Century when there was an upheaval in their contented community life with the “Christianising and conversion policy” of the Portuguese who were the new Masters of Goa, followed by the rigours of the “Inquisition”.
Dr Farias hinted at a connection that some of the old settlers hailing from Goa could possibly have a link with the “Lost Tribe of Benjamin’ or with the Portuguese Jews who were Conversos/ Marranos, eliciting from the history of the Goan / Mangalorean community based on her Doctoral thesis, “The Christian Impact in South Kanara”.
The Geneticists thereafter followed her lecture explaining to the participatory audience the steps in the DNA study. Consent was taken in writing from those desirous of giving the blood samples for the DNA testing for the study of the Brahmin origins of the Catholic community of Goa, Kumta and Mangalore, the sample population taken for the study. The collection of blood was made by the
CCMB team arranged at different venues in South Kanara (Mangalore and Feringapet), Goa and Kumta, with donors coming forward through friends and both Protestant and Catholic churches. Educational Institutions as St. Aloysius College, Karnataka Theological College (KTC), St. Joseph’s Seminary and Roshini Nilaya in Mangalore co-operated in this research. The team also collected samples at St. Ann’s Friary and then went to Monte Mariano (St. Fidelis’ Monastery, Feringapet) before going to Goa and Kumta.
Thereafter, the analysis was sent to Dr. K Thangaraj for setting the guidelines. CCMB was ready with the analysis of their findings in early 2021. In February 2021, the team at CCMB and Dr Farias wrote a final research paper. Lomous Kumar drafted the final paper after all of them gave their final inputs, which was subsequently submitted, to Springer Nature 2021 for publication.
The research paper on the Catholic Brahmins of Mangalore, Goa and Kumta, “Dissecting the Genetic History of the Roman Catholic Population of West Coast India” was recently published under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021.
This first study was to confirm the genetics of Catholic Brahmins as mentioned previously. CCMB also shared the results of each DNA test and the high-level summary of the report with each participant of the sampling exercise.
Others who contributed to the Research are Lomous Kumar, CSIR-CCMB, Satya Prakash, CSIR-CCMB, Dr. Anshuman Mishra, Institute of Advanced Materials, Dr. Mohamed Mustak, Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University and Dr. Niraj Rai, Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Uttar Pradesh besides Dr. K. Thangraj and Dr. Kranti Farias.
To get deeper insight into the origin and affinity of Roman Catholics of West Coast India, a detailed population genetic study using mtDNA, Y chromosomal DNA and genome wide autosomal marker was performed. Blood samples were collected from 110 individuals from the Roman Catholic community inhabited in Goa, Kumta and Mangalore in the west coast of India, following all ethical guidelines and with informed written consent.
To get a clearer picture of ancestral components, a model-based Admixture (Alexander et al. 2009) algorithm was used. The study found that the Roman Catholics carry South Asian ancestral components in a proportion intermediate to extreme Indo-European groups (having higher ANI components) from Pakistan as well as North India and Dravidians. It was further found that Roman Catholics show higher admixture with most of West Eurasian population groups, a trend similar to Indo-European group. This showed that Roman Catholics from Goa, Kumta and Mangalore were placed between Indian Indo-European caste groups and Dravidian caste groups along with Havik and Karnataka Brahmins.
This corresponded to what some historians who were working on Indian Jews diaspora said that some Jewish group came to India either after capturing of Jerusalem (700 BC) or as traders during King Solomon’s reign (970 BC).
Sharing the data, Dr Thangaraj observed, “Evolution shapes human populations differentially and leaves the impact of migration, admixture, bottlenecks and selection in genome. This in turn, impacts the disease outcome and drug response. Our aim of such studies is to find out multiple layers of population stratification within India, which will help in future in designing healthcare and disease management.”
On the assumption that would it be safe to assume the Roman Catholics of Konkan region could also be from the one of the Lost Tribes of Jewish Israel, Dr Thangaraj explained, “Yes, we have found the date of admixture of Jewish ancestry during ~600 BC, which corresponds to historical mentioning of migration of Lost Tribes. But we are expecting genetic data from ancient DNA of groups representing ancient Jewish diaspora to compare with our sample, which currently is unavailable.”
Answering a question on Kerala has St Thomas Christians who too believe they belong to a lineage of the Saint and also others from Middle East who came to India in 52 AD or earlier, Dr Thangaraj clarified, “We have not covered the Christians from Kerala in our current study, but will be happy to study these population and cover additional migration or admixture history of Kerala on sample access in future.”
On another question whether the continuous migration and mixing events of the last 2500 years ended in India or moved to other parts of the South Asia as we also find Konkan and Kerala Christian influence in Sri Lanka too, Dr Thangaraj felt it was unfair to draw this inference since the study did not cover the Christians from Sri Lanka in genetic studies. “If there are great influence of Christians from Kerala to other parts of South Asia, it will be interesting to correlate these historical findings with further genetic studies,” he added.
Nevertheless, the search for the Lost Tribes of Israel continues today. Africa, India, Afghanistan, Japan, Peru and Samoa are among the places where it said that the wandering Jews settled. Many fundamentalist Christians believe that tribes must be found before Jesus’ return. Some members of the Lembaa, a South African tribe that claims to be a Lost Tribe of Israel, have the genetic Cohan marker. Some Afghans too believe they are descendants of Lost Tribes.
Veteran Israeli journalist Hillel Halkin began hunting for the Lost Tribes of Israel in 1998. At that time, he thought the claim that a community of Indians on the Burmese border descended from one of the tribes was either a fantasy or hoax. “On his third trip to the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram, Halkin was shown texts that convinced him that the community, which calls itself the Bnei Menashe, has roots in the Lost Tribe of Menashe. The documents included a will and words to a song about the Red Sea. The argument, made in his new book ‘Across the Sabbath River‘ (Houghton Mifflin), is not just academic. [Source: Newsweek, Oct. 21, 2002]
Since 1980s, thousands of Bnei Menashe Jews in northeast India began going back to their ancestors’ homeland. About 6,000 more are waiting to join them. On January 3 this year, three Lhanghal sisters from northeast India – Rut, 28; Dina, 21; and Avigail, 13 – immigrated to Israel, the land their ancestors were forced to leave 27 centuries ago.
With a bit of help from Eliyahu Avichail, founder of the organization Amishav (My People Return), who trots the globe in search of lost Jews, in order to bring them back to their religion through conversation and directs them to Israel, they might just realise their dream.
Image Sources: Wikimedia, Commons, Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bible in Bildern, 1860
Other sources:
https://www.israel21c.org/the-return-of-a-lost-tribe-of-israel-27-centuries-later/
https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub389/entry-5710.html