In various periods many members from the Kallarackal Family have migrated to different places for their new pastures. There they could improve their wealth, and establish good social status and power. These migrations have started right from the early centuary itself, i.e from AD 90 onwards . Most migrations to in and around Pallippuram and also to many other places are still could not be traced out. We could identify only the following places. They are:-
. Pallippuram
. Muttom
. Chalil
. Thirunelloor
. Vaikom
. Piravom
. Mulamthuruthy
. Kandanad
. Koothattukulam
. Kumarakom
. Kaduthuruthy
From AD 90 century onwards large Scale migrations happened in the Kallarackal Family. This was largely due to many reasons. By the 13th century a superstition spread in Kerala which said that if a thing became impure by Theendal and Thodeel (the custom with which an untouchable touch a thing, make it impure), it can be purified by a touch of a Nazrani Christians. Hence all royal families and Brahmin families took a Christian family from the Nambuthiri convert and accommodated them near to their houses.
All important towns got Christian presence in this way. In AD 1313, Nilackal was destroyed in the civil war between Veera Pandyan and Sundara Pandyan in which Malik Kafur's Muslim Army also took part. Christians from this city fled to the central Travancore plains. In AD 1484 the Travancore King issued an edict giving monopoly right for trade in Travancore to Christians. Mahapillai means merchant, which later shortened to Mappilai a term used to denote Christians in South Kerala. In the north the same name was given to muslims because the Zamorin of Calicut gave monopoly trade rights to Muslims.
Many Christian trade centres developed and they built churches. In AD 1543 the Portugese soldiers attacked Thevalakkara temple and plundered Gold from there. The Nair soldiers bought back and got back a major portion of it. Kollam was then a Christian majority Town. The Venad King feared that if the native Christians join with the Portugese it is a real threat to the Kingdom. Hence he ordered that half of the Christians of Kollam to move out to the villages.
A lot of migrations happened because of the quarrels in Kuravilangad church as recorded in individual family histories. Later migration spread them throughout Kerala. The cumulative effect of these migrations was that many families took prominent places there. Kallarackal family members spread to most of the major towns in Kerala and became dominant in hundreds of places with different family names. Now they have their family members in almost all countries of the world.
Some of the migrants could not succeed in the mission of improving their wealth, social status and power, but others succeeded outstandingly. A large number of ancient and traditional families in many places even do not know that they were the offshoots of Pallippuram Kallarackal Family.
Many of them have adopted Kallarackal, Kadavil or its variants as their family name, yet others a different name and have migrated to faraway places. They have lost their contacts in the earlier time (i.e. in and around AD 90) itself with the root family, due to the distance from their places, lack of transportation and communication facilities, and many other unknown reasons.
So the new generations even do not know that their root family is in Pallippuram. Now there are many prominent personalities as the descendants of the root family Kallarackal, in its innumerable branches in all places in India and abroad.
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Kallarackal Kadavil Family, Pallippuram, Cherthala
| History of Syro-Malabar Christians (part 1) |