The Tharakans

No family is more closely tied to the story of Aranattukara than the Chiramel family, known for centuries simply as the Tharakans. Their house stands near the old boat landing. Their name is on a school, a market and a chapter of Cochin’s royal history. And much of the Christian settlement of the place grew up on land they held.

From Palayur to the landing

The Chiramels trace their roots to Palayur, one of the oldest Christian centres on the Kerala coast. An old explanation of the name goes like this. At Palayur, families living on the upper side of the holy tank were called Chiramel (“above the chira”, a tank with built-up sides), and those on the lower side Chirayath. Thrissur’s own Vadakkechira and Thekkechira carry the same word.

From Palayur, the book traces the family through the trading town of Chendamangalam and the Christian centre of Pazhuvil, and finally to Aranattukara — drawn, like so many before and after, by trade at the landing. The book places their arrival in the second half of the fifteenth century. Before that there is no written history of the place to speak of.

They were not only traders. The family was known for Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of Kerala, and was called to treat patients in palaces and noble houses, often without charge. They were also trained in martial arts and kept their own guards. That last skill, tradition says, is what made their name.

How the title was won

The story is told in more than one way, and the book gives both versions.

In the first, which the book takes from the local history Ambalavattam Annum Innum, the Zamorin of Kozhikode, Cochin’s great rival, overran Thrissur and trapped the Raja of Cochin inside his palace. A senior Nambudiri, Perumthidambu, led a small party of Vedic reciters into the palace to “say farewell” to the king, exchanged clothes with him, and stayed behind while the king walked out disguised among the Brahmins. The king hid in a Nambudiri house nearby, and that night the Tharakan of Aranattukara came and took him safely to Tripunithura.

In the second, told elsewhere in the book, the Tharakan hid the king inside a large stone jar in his own house, with a bowl of salted mangoes on top, so that searching soldiers saw nothing but pickle. Then he carried him by royal barge, under his own guard, to Tripunithura.

In both tellings the reward is the same: the title “Tharakan”, land near the kadavu free of tax, and the right to certain honours. The book dates the event to Kollam Era 670, about 1495. Elsewhere it adds that the rank of Tharakan was counted equal to that of a naduvazhi, a local chieftain.

Leaders of the settlement

The Tharakans controlled much of the buying and selling at the landing. At one time they also paid to develop the market, which people called the “Tharakan Market” (see The Port of Thrissivaperur).

The family’s medical skill brought more honours. The book tells of a Mathew Tharakan who cured a Raja of Cochin when other physicians had given up, and was made palace physician with a large grant of tax-free land. Later an Antony Tharakan, also a royal physician, received the title Vaidyaratnam (“jewel among physicians”), the rank of Madampi (a landed chieftain), a gold bracelet of honour, and a seat as the only Christian member of the Cochin Durbar, the state’s governing council. (The book is not entirely clear whether these honours went to the Chevalier described below or to an elder Antony Tharakan of the same name.)

What mattered most for Aranattukara was what the family did with its land. The Tharakans leased fields and gardens to Christian families who came for work and trade. Boatmen, traders, labourers and servants settled around them. Paddy, coconut, areca and pepper were planted. Over the generations, and especially from the time of Sakthan Thampuran, Aranattukara became what the book calls a Nazrani (St. Thomas Christian) village — and the parish that grew from it is the subject of the next chapter.

Chevalier Antony Tharakan

The most famous Tharakan lived only a short life. The book gives Chevalier Antony Tharakan’s dates as 1880 to 1912. He is remembered as wealthy, generous and public-spirited, a reformer and a friend of the poor.

In 1911 Pope Pius X made him a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester, an honour the book says no one in the Diocese of Thrissur had received before. He died the next year, young, and was buried inside the old East Church near the main altar.

He had hoped to rescue Aranattukara’s English school, which in 1911 could no longer meet the government’s new standards and became a Malayalam-medium school; his death left that hope unfinished. A new English school began in 1922, and in 1930 Inasu Tharakan handed its management to the parish. In recognition, the church committee named it Tharakans Secondary English School — today’s Tharakans School (Tharakans School).

The family stayed part of public life. When the parish split in two, a Mathew Tharakan was one of the five men — nicknamed the “Pancha Pandava army” by their opponents — who worked for reconciliation.

Sakthan Thampuran Palace (Vadakkechira), Thrissur — a reminder of the Cochin royal house whose favour the Tharakans enjoyed. Photo: Abhijith Sheheer · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

The house and its treasures

The Tharakan house is one of the few places in Aranattukara where the old world can still be touched. The book describes a drawing room “slumbering in the beautiful dreams of an old era”, and lists what remains inside:

finely worked crystal lamps, and foreign-made articles and curios of the old days;
a round pathayam (grain chest) hollowed from a single log, about twelve feet long;
double-walled plates that held boiling water to keep food warm for hours;
the robe of the papal knighthood;
a stone jar in which, it is said, a Thampuran was once hidden;
old church statues, candlesticks, and a Pietà painted in leaf dyes;
palm-leaf manuscripts of Ayurvedic remedies, and old stamp-paper deeds.

The house itself has its secrets: doors with hidden catches, and a double wall about thirty-two inches thick filled with sand — a defence, it is said, against the theevetti gangs who robbed by torchlight. Break the wall, and only sand pours out.

The family also had its own chapel, known as Tharakan’s Church — a privilege the book says was granted by the Pope and given to no one else in the area. The chapel has since been demolished, but many of its relics survive in the house.

What remains

The Tharakans’ story mixes record and legend, and the book is open about that. The royal title, the papal honour and the school are well remembered; the rescue of the king is family tradition, told in two forms. Either way, without this family Aranattukara might have stayed a quiet kara by the water.

Next: Christian Heritage.

Sources

Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 1 (the Tharakan title)
Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 3 (the influence of the Tharakan family)
Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 5 and ch. 14
Joy Chiramel, Arranadu – Aranadu – Orunadu (2024), ch. 17 (Chevalier Antony Tharakan; the antique collection and house chapel)