SYNOPSIS : In times gone by, marriage was an elaborate ceremony among the Syrian Christians (Nazrani Mappalas) of Malabar, and numerous rites had to be perforinirwith-thriccompaniment of songs and dances. The festivities lasted many days and gave free play to the artistic sense of the people. Some of the rites can be traced to ancient Malabar customs and others are definitely of Syrian (or Mesopotamian) origin. This is no wonder, seeing that this ancient community is the result of a racial mixture between the Malayali converts (believed to be of the Apostle Thomas) with the Syrian colonists who settled in the country for trade between the 4th and 9th centuries A.D. The following account in Malayalam contains a brief description of the ceremonies, with quotations from the ancient songs used in connection with them. The ceremonies await the analysis of sociologists and ethnographers ; and the songs and dances deserve to be carefully analysed by scholars versed in ancient Malayalam and Tamil. The present writer collected these songs twenty years ago when he was a College student, and a work written on the subject by him before 1920 was published recently under the title The Christian Literature of Kerala.' Many of the customs described above have lately gone out of vogue. They are obviously unsuited to the new social and economic environment, and will soon be forgotten. It is therefore necessary to record them at this juncture. The customs of other communities are also in the same plight, and hence the urgent need for ethnological and sociological studies in Southern India.

• Printed at - THE DIOCESAN PRESS, VEPERY, MADRAS
• Year - 1936

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