DNA sample of Georgia's St Katevan bone for matching in Goa

Panaji, Nov 19: India is likely to receive the precious DNA sample of the bone of the queen-turned-Patron Saint Ketevan of Georgia now located in the church named after her at its capital Tibilisi, to match with the sample found during recent excavations at the World Heritage complex of St Augustine Tower in Old Goa.

''A 7-member high-level delegation from Georgia which visited the St Augustine complex now under renovation in Old Goa, has promised us to arrange sending of the DNA sample for matching with the bone sample found here with the help of the state-of-the-art laboratory in the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB),'' according to N Taher, superintending archaeologist of the Archaeological Society of India's Goa Circle.

Talking to UNI in connection with the beginning of the World Heritage Week celebrations here today, Mr Taher said the members of the team ''venerated'' the relic casket containing the bone of late Queen after examining the complex and the site where the relics were found.

''The focus of this year's excavation work is the identification of the place where the relics of the Queen Ketevan of Georgia were once kept and its validation by the team of archaeologists including a priest from Georgian capital Tibilisi,'' Mr Taher said.

Earlier, the archaeologists, architects and conservators stumbled upon a tombstone of Manuelde Sequeira e Matos leading to the identification of the Chapter Chapel of Our Lady of Grace during the process of renovtion of the world heritage monument during 2003-05.

It was here that the relics of Queen Ketevan, the Patron Saint of Georgia, supposed to have been brought to Old Goa by the Augustinian Friars from Persia (Iran), were kept.

The site came under international attention when a letter from Catholic Patriarch of all Georgia had written a letter to the then Ambassador of India in Ukraine on October 26,1998, seeking permission to search for the relics of Queen Ketevan in Goa. Subsequently, Georgia's Foreign Minister Irakli Menagarischvili also presented the case to India pleading for locating the relics and a ten-member Georgian delegation including its Bishop visited India. After conducting a preliminary search for the relics, they prepared an epitaph and offered a mass in the main alter of the church and took the slab back to Georgia.

The emperor of Persia Shah Abbas-I in 1613 led an army to conquer Georgia and took Queen Ketevan as prisoner. She remained prisoner from 1614 to 1624 in Shiraz (Iran). In 1624, the emperor decided to convert the queen into Muslim faith so that she could join his harem but she resisted it despite torture. Finally she was strangled to death on September 22, 1624.

The queen who died a martyr for being a devout Christian, was bestowed the Sainthood by the Pope in the 17th century. In 1963, according to an account, two Augustinian friars arrived in Shiraz to start a mission and gained the Queen's trust and became her confessors.

The two unearthed the remains of the queen and hid them for three years. In 1627, they brought her right arm and palm to Goa and kept them in a black box on the second window of the epistle side of the St Augustine Church complex.

The complex was built by the Augustinian order whose friars arrived in Goa in 1572. The building of the church of the convent, dedicated to Our Lady of Grace Begai in 1597, was completed in 1610.

But in 1835, the church was abandoned due to expulsion of the religious orders from Goa by the Portuguese government which had also ordered its demolition.

In 1846, the main vault of the church collapsed and the convent repidly decayed. By this time, the valuable articles belonging to the religious complex were either sold or lost and some disbursed over many chruches in Goa, according to the authorities.

UNI