May 5th, 12 noon
Claudius Buchanan, a Scottish theologian, and Church Missionary Society missionary wrote in a letter from Cochin in February 1807,
I’ve been in Cochin or the surrounding area for over two months and have been familiar with the Jews. They don’t live in Cochin; instead, they dwell in a town called Jews’ Town, about a mile away. It is almost entirely populated by Jews, who are served by two respectable synagogues. Among them are some clever men who are well-versed in current world history. There are also Jews here from far-flung places of Asia, thus here is a wellspring of information about those people in the East, with ships constantly communicating with the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indus Mountains. The Jerusalem or White Jews, and the Ancient or Black Jews, are the two kinds of Jews who live in the city. This is where the White Jews live. The Black Jews have a synagogue here as well, but most of them live in the province’s interior towns. I’ve watched most of both classes now. My questions focused primarily on their antiquity, manuscripts, and feelings about the current situation of their country.
