Chapter Title: CHRISTIANITY IN PRE-COLONIAL INDONESIA

Book Title: A History of Christianity in Indonesia

Book Editor(s): Jan Sihar Aritonang and Karel Steenbrink
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbgb1.6

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 PART ONE

THE FIRST CHRISTIANS: UNTIL 1800

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 CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTIANITY IN PRE-COLONIAL INDONESIA

The South Indian Thomas Christians trace their faith back to the Apostle
Thomas and sometimes also to S. Bartholomew. Scholars are divided on this
issue. The possibility of relatively easy travelling from Palestine via Egypt to
South India in the first century cannot be denied by any serious scholar. The
defenders of an apostolic origin base their arguments on the apocryphal Acts
of (Judas) Thomas (c. 200) and other third or fourth century documents, the
living tradition of the Kerala Christians and also on the ancient tradition of
S. Thomas’ tomb near Mylapore (Madras).
Some historians do not accept a voyage of one of Jesus’ disciples as far as
India, but all acknowledge the presence of Christian communities in southern
India at least since the fourth century. In 67 AD there was already a Jewish
colony in Cochin. During the fourth century Persian Christians either rein-
vigorated the apostolic church, which had declined over the course of time, or
they founded migrant communities on India’s coasts. The merchant Thomas
of Cana and other saintly men are mentioned in old documents as preachers
of Christianity in 345. Since these early times the South Indian Christians
have been closely connected with the colourful Church of Mesopotamia and
Persia. Naturally they followed the teaching, terminology, and Syriac liturgy
of the Persians and therefore were regarded as ‘Nestorians’. The connections
between the patriarch in Seleukia-Ktesiphon and the ‘bishop of the Indians’
had been quite close as far as the political situation under Muslim govern-
ment permitted.

Persian Christians in South-East Asia

The southern or maritime Silk Road was already in use by merchants and
travellers from Persia during Sassanid times, that is before (and certainly
during) Umayad rule, beginning in 661. I-ching used a Posse (Persian) ship
for his voyage from Canton to Palembang in 671. There were several Persian
colonies in Canton and in Hainan.
The Persian or ‘Nestorian’ Church calls itself the ‘Church of the East’. Bishops
from ‘India’ attended its synods in the years 820 and 893. Metropolitans of
India are mentioned in Persian documents in the sixth and in the fourteenth
centuries, and even ‘missionary bishops’ to the ‘Isles of the sea’, of Dabbag
(Sumatra or Java?), Sin and Macin (China), who certainly got as far as South

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4 chapter one

India. This means that at least in the beginning of the sixth century Christianity
was well established in India.
Cosmas Indicopleustes met churches in Malabar, Sri Lanka and ‘the rest of
the Indias’ during his visit in the 520s. In the seventh century a metropolitan
of Fars (south Iran) was reprimanded because he neglected his duties to the
Indian churches “which extend from the borders of the Persian Empire to the
place they call Qalah, which is at a distance of 1200 parasangs [about 4,000
miles]”. This sentence raises two questions: When was the first metropolitan
of India appointed, and where was Qalah situated?
The first metropolitan for ‘India’ had probably been appointed by Patriarch
Timothy I (728–823). Qalah could mean Galle (Ceylon), but also Kalah in
Malaya. After a study of many Arab manuscripts, G.R. Tibbets locates Qalah
on the west coast of Malaya, near the islands of Langkawi. From around this
place Christians have been reported as early as 650. Others identify Qalah
with Klang and/or Kedah, important harbours for exchange of goods between
merchants from India, China and the Indonesian archipelago. Already before
850, Kalah (Chinese Ko-lo) was a stop en route to China as mentioned by Ibn
Khurdadhih. Persian merchants are known to have frequented the Sumatran
harbours of Palembang and Lambri (now Banda Aceh). A Persian colony on
the Malay Peninsula is reported in Chinese sources during the fifth and sixth
centuries. In 717 the Ceylonese Vajrabodhi travelled with 35 Persian merchants
to Srivijaya. In Sri Lanka too there was a Persian Christian community in the
sixth century as reported by Cosmas Indicopleustes.
During these times missionary monks were trained in the Euphrates and
Tigris region of Mesopotamia in great numbers to be sent to the East. Some
Persian monks sailed together with Christian merchants “to the country of the
Indians” during Sassanid times (sixth century). During Patriarch Timothy I’s
reign (780–823) “many monks crossed the sea to India and China with only
a staff and a script.” On their way to China, they certainly passed the Straits
of Malacca. What do we know about Christians in this area?
In all probability the above-mentioned place of Qalah, 1,200 parasangs away
from ‘India’, is the Malayan harbour town of Kalah, somewhere around present
day Kedah. During the ninth century Kalah became even more important to
the Arab seafarers, who together with Persians traded there with Chinese and
Malay merchants. Kalah, Lemuri, Fansur, and Nias occur time and again as
stops on the way from the Persian Gulf via Sri Lanka to China.
From all this reliable data it can be stated that Persian and Arab seafarers
and merchants sailed to India, visited and lived in different harbours on the
West Malayan coast, with some of them sailing further on to China. Persians
are known to have used the southern or maritime Silk Road at least since the
fourth century. Arab or Tashih traders in the Malayan waters are mentioned as
early as 750 and then in greater numbers travelled to China. Quite a number

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 christianity in pre-colonial indonesia 5

of them settled in South China harbours and some at intermediate stops.

Five hundred Persian families lived during the fourth century in Tun-sun
in the Malayan Peninsula. Christians preferred to travel with Persians and
on their ships. Among them even some monks sailed to South-East Asia.
Nestorian church documents speak about itinerant bishops in India and the
lands beyond. This background is the setting for the question whether there
have been Christian communities on Indonesian soil before the arrival of the
Portuguese in these waters (1511).

Christians in Baros, North Sumatra, and some other places in the

Malay Archipelago

A historian and geographer, who lived in Egypt during the twelfth century,
collected all available information about churches and convents in Africa and
Asia. He was of Armenian origin and called Shaikh Abu Salih al Armini. He
visited India twice. His book Tadhakur fihi Akhbar min al-Kanaʾis waʾl Adyar
min Nawahin Misri wal aqthaʿaha was written in the twelfth century in the
Coptic tradition. A manuscript was purchased in Egypt in the seventeenth
century by Vansleb and preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This
manuscript was translated and edited by B.T.A. Evetts in 1895 in Oxford.1 Abu
Salih used the books of Abu Jafar al-Tabari (died 923) and of Al Shabushti
(died 988) on the same subject, but he also collected new information wher-
ever possible.
The chapter on India (pp. 296–300) speaks about the Apostle Thomas as
its first missionary, about the Christians in the city of Quilon on the coast of
Travancore (South India), and its churches. Then he continues:
Fahsur: Here there are several churches; and all the Christians here are Nestorians;
and that is the condition of things here. It is from this place that camphor comes;
and this commodity (is a gum which) oozes from the trees. In this town there
is one church named after our Lady, the Pure Virgin Mary.
Immediately afterwards Salih talks about Sana in Yemen. This short notice
of Abu Salih needs some clarification, for example on Fahsur. A. Butler, who
added the notes to Evetts translation, says it should be written Mansur(ah),
a country in north-west India, “. . . famous among the Arabs for its camphor.”
Better known for its camphor and frequented by merchants from the Malabar
Coast of India is Fansur or Pansur, near Baros on the west coast of northern
Sumatra. As with the place, the period of this Christian community cannot be
determined exactly. But all information about Persian merchants in South-East

1
Evetts (ed.) 1895, reprint 1969.

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6 chapter one

Asia, and the Christians among them, points to a period between the ninth
and the eleventh century.
Except for the short notice given by Abu Salih, there is no further infor-
mation on the Christians at Fansur/Baros. It may be interesting to know that
Ebedjesus of Nisibis (1291–1319) mentioned Dabbagh as the district of a
bishop. Dabbagh during this period was a common name for Sumatra or Java.
In Malacca the Portuguese discovered the foundation of a Chaldean church,
after their arrival in 1511. In 1503 three travelling bishops were appointed by
Elias V, one among them for Zabagh (Dabbagh), the other two for Sin and
Masin (China).
At the court of queen Tribhuwana (1329–1250) of Majapahit and in
Palembang Father J. de Marignolli OFM on his way home from Beijing (1347)
met some, possibly local, Christians. Recent local research uncovered an old
place name near Baros, Janji Mariah, which could mean ‘Promise of Mary’
or just a ‘solemn’ promise. Recent excavations have shown close connections
between Baros, India and the Persian Gulf existing from the ninth to the
eleventh century.2
Some Indonesian writers took the conclusion that the first Christians had
arrived in the seventh century and established a community in Northern
Sumatra. As we have seen above this opinion can not be based on solid facts
for the seventh until the ninth centuries.3

Adolf Heuken SJ

Bibliography

(for a more elaborate bibliography see Heuken 2002)

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Gereja Katolik Indonesia. Jakarta: KWI Indonesia, I:19–40.

2
Letter of C. Guillot, leader of the excavations at Lobu Tua near Baros to A. Heuken,
25–11–2000.
3
In the first chapter of the five volume history of Catholicism in Indonesia, published in
Indonesian in the early 1970s, the Jesuit Jan Bakker wrote the chapter on the pre-colonial
period. Bakker identified in the text of Abu Salih al-Armini Fahsur with the place Fansur or
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a letter by Iso’yabh III, Nestorian Metropolitan of Erbil and Mosul. (Muskens 1972-I:27–36;
cf. R. Duval 1905:182).

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 christianity in pre-colonial indonesia 7

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