GENESIS OF THE THEORY:

Of the great mass of separate treatises that claims to form part of  Skanda Purana of the Brahmanical lore, comparatively little has hitherto been published.  Sir Hans Sloans in his Catalogue of printed Sanskrit books at the British Museum mentions fifteen separate titles under this heading. Most of them consisting of single kathas or mahatmyas were contained on a few cadjan leaves. A few more treatises have been noticed and analyzed in Prof.Aufrecht's Catalogue  of the Bodleian Sanskrit Manuscripts. Among the collection of manuscripts in the Catalogue of La Figaniere  is  "Livro da Seita dos Indios Orientaes E Principalmente os Malavares" specified in book III, Chap. 11 and numbered as 1820 belonging to  Fr. Jacomus Fenicio.  The author of that Latin manuscript  has for the first time mentioned in passing the Aryan - Orarian theme cited by the present writer. Purchas in his Pilgrimage mentions the name of this Spanish Jesuit priest from Naples (Italy) then staying in India circa 1609 AD, but never bothered to publish his work. This manuscript must have come into the collection of Sir Hans Sloans before 1753 AD the year of the latter's death. I may not be woefully wrong in suggesting that this document was first edited and translated from Latin by Finnish Professor Jarl Charpentier who made a Preliminary Report on the work  in London’s  Bulletin of London's School of Orienal Studies in 1923. It was again  translated into English by Rev. H. Hosten S. J. Principal of St. Josephs College Darjeeling and that  translation was sent to T.K. Joseph for inclusion in his  Kerala Society Papers published from Trivandrum. But is not published.

Another admission that would make uncomfortable reading in academic circles is the discovery
of  Col. Mackenzie's Collection of Manuscripts edited and published first by H.H. Wilson from Calcutta in 1828 and subsequently by Rev. William Taylor from Madras in 1862. This Collection also reiterates an engrossing description of Fenicio's version. Originally Jacomus Fenicio's statement is found endorsed in London's prestigious Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies by Danish Indologist from Copenhagen,  Jarl Charpentier. Cochin's Dutch Chaplain Jacob Canter Visscher in his monumental Letters from Malabar (17117 - 1722) reiterates the same step. The original Dutch letters  found its way into English translation by Travancore Cochin's British Resident Major Heber Drury who  quite fortuitously stumbled upon the same from among Dutch Archival Records after British occupation of Cochin.  IT was he who classified the same in Madras Press List for 1862. Hence Parashumara legend concerning Malayala Brahmin origins is  found substantiated by weighty authorities viz. Francis Buchanan(1807) Canter Visscher(1862) Francis Day(1863) Sir W.W. Hunter(1872) Samuel Mateer(1883) Sir James Campbell(1883) John Garrett (1871) William Logan(1887) Meadows Taylor (1889)John Sturrock(1894) CD Macleans(1885) Edgar Thurston(1909).

Things remaining so, data collected from Indolological scholars provide robust optimism for circulating Fenicio's stand on Malayala Brahmin origins.  In the light of this fundamental truth, I find Nambudri Brahmin illoms or habitats smack of a wild wizardry of words that spill a beguiling spell of narwhal, turtle, prawns and spawns. I discovered this during my extended stay at Moothedeth Palasseri Mana (a Nambudri illom) at Karikkad in Malappuram Disrict in 1985 - 1988 and my continuous association with "swajana sangamam" and "yogakshema sabha" from 1995 - 2001. Add to this the longevity and perpetuity of Yajur Vedic nuptial rite of fish- catching among Nambudri Brahmin weddings is what makes my book MALAYALA BRAHMINS AUTOCHTHON THEORY marathon, monumental and unique. In furtherance thereof,  fresh insights on the Dhara form of marriage found exclusive to both these  polarised communities, any attempts to stifle and strangulate Napolitean priest's observation by our fraternity of social historians  this is all what I can say,  we only remain to stay as Mummy - makers wrapping cotton around pupil's mouths.  It may also be said in parenthesis that, by such suppression of inconvenient ideas in the name of protecting ethnic sentiments,  the nation will have to forget its own history, which   in due course  of time, will lead to such state of affairs in which the nation will have no history.

Literary source material being an important part of data collection to study the origin and descent of societies, it may contain lots of information about that particular society at any given point of time. Myths were once upon a time dismissed as ferago of legendary nonsense, nay, an absolute load of rubbish they say. But that attitude has undergone drastic change now. Today, myths and legends assume literary perfiguration that help us to arrive at fresh dimensions in human relationship possibly through a prospective assessment of the digressions, adaptations and modification of the original myths. In my maiden attempt to resurrect Nambudiri otherwise called Malayala Brahmin roots from an halieutic perspective, presumably from what Orientalists and Indologists would call Ardha Brahmin's  halieutic lineage that is found glued to this terminology in early Sanskrit Classical Dictionaries  reveals overwhelming insights.

When British Indologists of the stature of John Garrett (1871), CD Maclean (1893) and Philip Meadows Taylor (1889) pontificated  on this specific term Ardha Brahmins traced to ‘ fishermen appointed by Parasurama to officiate as priests in temples established by him’ , their version can be further witnessed in Francis Day's (1863) and Bombay University Vice Chancellor John Wilson's (1877) crisp and succinct statements tracing the etymological or semantic derivative Nambu in the Appellation Nambudiri to 'paddle used to steer boats'. It is a direct hit at Nambudiri etymology that confirms in its entirety the concept of halieutic inbuilt in Nambudiri ancestry. Even for that matter, Malabar Revenue Divisional Officer, William Logan (Madras 1887) who initially pooh - poohs fishermen involvement and participation in a Brahmin Chronicle, as a slur on the on the origin of Nambudiris, albeit with tongue in cheek statement, in his footnote he has had to admit in quite irrevocable a term that 'in Malabar there are also indications of some such tradition having been at one time current'. It is a message loud and clear.

The sudden spurt of fresh literature proffered by post structural analysts whose very epistemological premise on Ardha Brahmin interpretation poses a challenge nay, who most vehemently and  vociferously argue that it is more a fiction - like pattern of a story inherently impossible of belief; little do such of those proponents ever  realise that they in fact echo the tenets of some other post structural analysts who explored the relationship between language, subjectivity and the construction of cultural interpretation.