Several towns in Kerala have names that end with the sound -nchery: Anchery, Avanavanchery, Ayanchery, Chemancheri, Ceruvanchery, Chittalancheri, Elevancherry, Kakkancheri, Kalpakanchery, Kannanchery, Kadanchery, Kavanchery, Kizhakkencheri, and so on. While their English spellings seem to make them similar to town names that end with -chery without the preceding -n- such as Tellichery, Changanacherry, Thottapuzhacherry, and others, the latter towns are pronounced as -shery (or -sseri), which is phonetically quite different from -nchery. Further, although -nchery sounds very much like -chery, chery is a relatively modern word derived from Tamil meaning ‘slum,’ which does not apply to any of these towns. All in all, -nchery does not have any meaning in modern Malayalam.
Some of these -nchery towns have local lore that seeks to explain their strange names. For example, Mattancherry, currently a municipality in Kochi, supposedly derives from “Ancheri Matom” which is assumed to refer to a matom ‘Nambuthiri house’ named Ancheri. While this lore somewhat explains the matta- part of the name, it does not explain the -ncherry part, nor why the name has been turned around from Ancheri-matom to Mattancherry. Besides, it also fails to account for ancheri, which remains an obscure proper noun.
On the other hand, the cultural history of the town may provide an alternative, and indeed more rational and complete, interpretation of its name. The patron deity of Mattancherry is a goddess seated in present day Palliarakav Devi Temple, which is situated across the street from a building called Ariyittuvazhcha Kovilakam (now a protected monument — see picture above). In the olden days, when Kochi was a kingdom, the kings’ coronation ceremony, called ariyittuvazhcha, was performed in this building. That it stands opposite the temple of the patron deity of Mattancherry, so that the coronation ceremony was performed in the presence of Palliarakav Devi, is likely no coincidence.
To the ancient Egyptians, goddess Matt (called Maat by Egyptologists) was the truth keeper of the universal order, the deified form of physical and moral law, akin to rta of the Vedic Hindus. When a pharaoh took the throne, he swore an oath to the goddess to maintain universal order. The name of the goddess also came to refer to anything true, real, pure — matt, which incidentally is a word in Malayalam with the same meaning (e.g., matt iduka ‘fix rules,’ mattilla ‘limitless’) a version of which is used nowadays in reference to precious metals: maatteriya thankam ‘purest gold.’
The word for ‘divine’ in very ancient Egyptian was ncheri (other interpretations include necheri, neteri and nuteri) so that Matt-ncheri corresponds to ‘Divine Matt,’ suggesting that goddess Matt was perhaps the earlier form of Palliarakav Devi under pharaonic Egyptian influence before she transformed under Hindu Brahmanism to goddess Durga around 1000 CE. Giving credence to this theory is the custom of performing the Kochi king’s coronation ceremony before Palliarakav Devi, the patron deity of Mattancherry. Indeed, eriyit-vatche, in Egyptian, phonetically close to Malayalam ariyittuvazhtcha, translates as ‘coronation ceremony.’ Today, the Palliarakav Devi Temple is not a particularly popular shrine; it is eclipsed by other temples in the vicinity. Yet, it could be an ancient witness to an unbroken tradition going back to Kerala’s earliest history.
Mattancherry was, and still is, a flourishing port on the delta where the Vembanad Kayal meets the Arabian Sea. A large part of Kerala’s maritime history may be found in the temples of this small town, beginning with the Palliarakav Devi temple; followed by temples built by the Levantine people, now replaced with all three of their major modern religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and finally, temples by later immigrants from other parts of India — Jain, Nambuthiri, Konkani, and Gujarati. Although the Chinese did not build any temples in the town, they gave the locals their fishing nets, which can be found even today in the backwaters surrounding Mattancherry.
Mattancherry is not the only town with this pharaonic Egyptian flavor. Perumanam, one of the oldest settlements in Kerala, and home of one of the oldest temples in India, is considered these days to be a corruption of the Malayalam/Sanskrit words peru ‘large’ vanam ‘forest.’ Current pronunciation, in keeping with this interpretation, tends to Peruvanam; however, in older texts, the village was called Perumanam. The original name, which does not have a corresponding Malayalam meaning, is actually quite enlightening when seen from a pharaonic Egyptian perspective: pr-mn was ‘temple of Min,’ pr-imn and pr-mnat ‘temple of Amun,’ and several ancient towns in Egypt were actually named so, such as pru-manu, a city in the Nile Delta.
Another town with a similar toponym is Paravur, home to the Peruvaram Temple, which is now dedicated to Lord Shiva, and attested to be among the temples established during very ancient times. Pr-ur (likely pronounced peravur, paravur or peruvar) in Egypt referred to the temple of Osiris in Aphroditopolis. Pr-wrm, likely pronounced peruvaram, was a geographical name (perhaps of a town or temple) near Edfu on the Nile river in Egypt. These toponyms likely suggest that towns in Kerala may have been named during olden times for their more famous counterparts across the Indian Ocean, similar to the present-day little towns of Rome and Paris in the United States of America named for their more famous counterparts in Europe across the Atlantic Ocean.
In similar vein, Payyanur, an ancient coastal town in Kannur district that sits by the mouth of wide backwaters, evokes the Egyptian term for ‘the sea’ payyam, after which the Egyptian oasis Fayyum is named. This Egyptian connection is most visible in the names of the oldest settlements of Kerala, which seems to imply that Kerala was perhaps inhabited during ancient times by people who sought to exploit the natural treasures of the land for trade.
Indeed, this hypothesis may be borne out in a small measure by the name of a now tiny hamlet in Malappuram district, Payyanad, located far from any water body near Manjeri, known to have been populated since the first human occupation in Kerala, as attested by historic relics such as dolmens, menhirs, and rock-cut caves. Malappuram lies on the slopes of the Sahyadri mountains. It has been known since ancient times as a source of gold. During British colonial times, around thirty companies with more than three million pounds in capitalization cumulatively prospected for gold there. Gold continues to be a major economic mineral in Malappuram. Gold was highly prized in pharaonic Egypt too; epigraphic evidence shows that more than four thousand years ago, around 2200 BCE, Egyptians undertook large expeditions for gold and other minerals to the biyya ‘mines’ of faraway lands across the ocean.
Considering the -nchery towns and other ancient settlements in Kerala that have Egyptian sounding names, along with the pharaonic Egyptian influence in other aspects of Kerala’s culture (e.g., Onam, Thiruvathira, Vishu, Mund, Karaima, Kappal) could the ancient gold mines of Payya-nad have any connection with the biyya ‘mines’ of the Egyptians?
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