Place · Syrian Christian church · India
Chayal, Idukki
Also known as Chayal, Chayal (Nilackal), Idukki, St Thomas' Nilackal
The Chayal (also Chayal Mar Thoma) Church at Nilakkal in Idukki district, Kerala, in the Western Ghats near Sabarimala — the inland seventh of the seven-and-a-half churches (Ezhara Palli) that Saint Thomas is said to have founded in Kerala in 52 CE. The Chayal site is identified by Thomas Christian tradition as the only Ezhara Palli church in the Western Ghats, serving the Pandalam-period hill communities. The current church structure is 1983 rebuild on much older foundations. The 1983 Nilakkal cross controversy (when a stone cross was found at the Nilakkal Sabarimala forest, triggering a political-religious controversy about whether the Sabarimala pilgrim area had been a pre-Hindu Christian site) made Chayal part of the Sabarimala-Nilakkal cultural geography debates. The adjacent Nilakkal archaeological site preserves 10-century stone-cross and inscription remains.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 9.383, 77.050
Connections (1)
- Companion in the same setKollam Marth Mariam
Chāyal in the Idukki hills is the one inland church of the seven and Kollam the southern port, which together describe the shape of the pepper trade rather than of any missionary route: the spice came down from the hill country to the coast, and the churches sit along that descent. Chāyal is also the least certainly located of the seven, and more than one village in the Western Ghats has been proposed for it over the past century.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nilakkal”. Kerala church records; Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (1989).
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