Buddhism is the fourth largest religion of the world after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Although it originated in India, it has stronghold in countries like Tibet, China, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia where missioaries from India carried its message. Buddhism was founded in India by prince Siddhartha Gautam, who was born about 550 B.C. in Northern India and lived till 485 B.C. Siddhartha lived in wealth and pleasantness but he found sufferi ng and sickness among people in his kingdom. He left his home and wandered around to find the meaning of life. One day he sat under a bodhi tree and got the enlightenment. From that time on he was called as BUDDHA. Buddhism has many concepts akin to Hinduism like karma and reincarnation. Buddha suggested that life is full of sufferings and one must act in a way to escape from them.

• All life is sorrow and suffering
• Human suffers due to desire or selfcenteredness
• Overcome desire
• Desire can be ended by following the eight fold path- right belief, intention,
  speech, action, work, effort, thinking, and meditation.

A person who follows this path gets rid of desire and hatred and achieves spiritual peace i.e.NIRVANA. This would then lead to end of KARMA cycle or rebirth of soul (reincarnation). Buddha founded the Buddhist monastic order before leaving the wheel of life. The order known as SANGHA lays down certain principles-

• no killing of humans or animals;
• monks will shave their head and beard, wear special
  yellow robes have a bowl for begging and a string with 108 beads. These monks never
  marry and devote their life to meditation and service.

Buddhism reached its peak in India during the time of king Ashok in about 320 B.C. but started declining under Gupta dynasty. Indian Buddhism, in time, restored many of older Hindu beliefs and gods. By 1100 A.D., Hinduism again became the major religion of India.

The Buddhists came to Kerala and established their temples and monasteries in different parts of the country.  The following Hindu temples were once Buddhist shrines:  the Vadakkunnathan Temple of Trichur, the Kurumba Bhagavathi Temple of Cranganore, and the Durga Temple at Paruvasseri near Trichur.  A large number of Buddha-images have been discovered in the coastal districts of Alleppey and Quilon; the most important Buddha-image is the famous Karumati Kuttan near Ambalappuzha.  Buddhism probably flourished for 200 years (650-850) in Kerala. The Paliyam Copper Plate of the Ay King, Varaguna (885-925 A.D.) shows that the Buddhists enjoyed some royal patronage even in the tenth century.

The decline of Buddhism started in the eighth century with the arrival of the Aryan missionaries and the Brahminical religion.  The Brahmin scholars  defeated Buddhist monks in debates and established the superiority of the Hindu religion.  Adi Sankaracharya, the Hindu revivalist, was also responsible for the fall of Buddhism; he founded Hindu monasteries and trained Hindu priest-scholars to combat his Buddhist adversaries.  Buddhism faded away gradually and completely disappeared during the reign of the Vaishnavite Kulasekharas in the eleventh century.  What actually happened was that Buddhism was reabsorbed into Hinduism from which it broke away.  Many Keralites, like the Ezhavas, who were most likely Buddhists once, gradually became Hindus.

Buddhism has left its impact on Kerala.  The images and tall rathas (cars) used in temple processions, and utsavams (fairs) are said to be Buddhist legacies. The Ayurvedic system of medical treatment is also a gift of Buddhism.  Buddhists opened schools [in pallikudam  and ezhuthupally. Pally is the Buddhist term for school) near their monasteries.  Kerala temples show traces of Buddhist art and architecture.  Amarasimha, the author of the popular Sanskrit text-book used in Kerala schools until recently, was a Buddhist.  Kumaran Asan, the great Kerala poet, was influenced by the great Buddhist religion and wrote the famou, Buddhist poems:  Karuna. Chandala Bhikshuki, and Sri Buddha Charitam.

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There is no consensus of opinion on the date of the arrival of the first Jews in India.  The tradition of the Cochin Jews maintains that after 72 A.D., after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, 10,000 Jews migrated to Kerala.  A second tradition says that the Jews are the descendants of the Jews taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and then released by Cyrus of Persia in the sixth century B.C.  A third theory holds the view that they came to India in 370 from Majorca where they were exiled by the Roman Emperor Vespasian. A fourth tradition, the Christian tradition, says that when St. Thomas the Apostle visited Muziris in 52 A.D., he stayed in the Jewish quarter.  The only verifiable historical evidence about the Kerala Jews goes back only to the Jewish Copper Plate Grant of Bhaskara Ravi Varman of 1000 A.D.  This docu-ment records the royal gift of rights and privileges to the Jewish Chief of Anjuvannam Joseph Rabban.

The Jews, like the rest of the Keralites, came from the East Coast in the sixth century and after.  They came to India as political refugees and/or as traders.  Because of the paucity of their numbers at any time in their his-tory in India, it is very likely that they came only in small numbers to India and remained small unless most of them became Christians at one time.  According to one tradition, St. Thomas converted many of them to Christianity.  It seems likely that the fate and fortune of the Jews were tied in with the fate and fortune of the Christians.  In my view, the early Christians of India were converts from Judaism.  The clearest evidence for their view is found in the Aramaic language once spoken by the Kerala Christians and used even today in the prayer books of Kerala's Syrian Christian community.  It was the language of the Iraqi Jews and of some Iraqis even today.  In the sixteenth century White Jews from Spain and Portugal came to Kerala. 

The Portuguese did not look favorably on the Jews.  They destroyed the Jewish settlement in Cranganore and sacked the Jew town in Cochin and partially destroyed the famous Cochin Synagogue in 1661.  However, the tolerant Dutch allowed the Jews to pursue their normal life and trade in Cochin.  According to the testimony of the Dutch Jew, Mosss Pereya De Paiva, in 1686 there were 10 synagogues and nearly 500 Jewish families in Cochin.  During the British times, too, the Jews enjoyed peace and protection.  After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, most Jews (85%) decided to depart for Israel.  All the Black Jews and Brown Jews, about 3,000, went to Israel between 1948 and 1955; they are known as Cochini in Israel today.  Only a -few hundred Jews remained in Kerala; they were all white Jews.  In 1961 there were only 35'9 Jews in Kerala with only two synagogues open for service:  the Pardesi Synagogue in Maltancherry built in 1567 and the synagogue in Parur.

Today the number of the Jews has dwindled down to a mere 50; most of them are elderly people, and women outnumber men.  According to the prominent Jewish businessman of Kerala, S. S. Koder, the main problem for the Kerala Jews is to find bridegrooms and brides for their young people in Kerala. When it is time for them to get married, they leave for the Kiriath Shemona settlement in Israel where most of the Cochin Jews resettled.  Another problem is the absence of a good shoeth (butcher) to prepare kosher meat after ritual slaughter.  Fortunately, they have found one recently.

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