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| - The Syrian Malabar Nasrani people, also known as Saint Thomas Christians and Nasranis are an ethnoreligious group from Kerala, India, adhering to the various churches of the Saint Thomas Christian tradition. They are also known as Syrian-Malabar Christians, Suriyani Christiaanikal, Mar Thoma Nasrani, or more popularly as Syrian Christians in view that they use Syriac liturgy since the early days of Christianity in India.
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abstract
| - The Syrian Malabar Nasrani people, also known as Saint Thomas Christians and Nasranis are an ethnoreligious group from Kerala, India, adhering to the various churches of the Saint Thomas Christian tradition. They are also known as Syrian-Malabar Christians, Suriyani Christiaanikal, Mar Thoma Nasrani, or more popularly as Syrian Christians in view that they use Syriac liturgy since the early days of Christianity in India. The Syrian Malabar Nasranis are the descendants of the natives and those of the Jewish diaspora in Kerala who became Christians in the Malabar Coast in the earliest days of Christianity. The possibility of the early converts being partially from the ten Lost Tribes of Northern Kingdom of ancient Israel can not also be ruled out. The community also comprises several ancient Aramaic Christian settlements in Kerala. It has been suggested that the term Nasrani derives from the name Nazarenes used by ancient Jewish Christians in the Near-East who believed in the divinity of Jesus but clung to many of the Mosaic ceremonies. They follow a unique Hebrew-Syriac Christian tradition which includes several Jewish elements although they have absorbed some Hindu customs . Their heritage is Syriac-Keralite, their culture South Indian with semitic and local influences, their faith St. Thomas Christian, and their language Malayalam. Much of their Jewish tradition has been forgotten, especially after the Portuguese invasion of Kerala in the early 1500s.
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