ABSTRACT
The first Anglican bishopric in India was established at Calcutta in 1814. For the first
century of their life, Anglican Churches used the Book of Common Prayer, 1662. The
first suggestions for the revision of the eucharistic liturgy came in 1920. The liturgy
was published in order for it to be considered at the 1920 Lambeth Conference in a
book entitled The Eucharist in India: A Plea for a Distinctive Liturgy for the Indian
Church with a Suggested Form.1 The rite was unashamedly eastern in character,
mainly because of the presence of the Syrian Church of Malabar in India whose
liturgy, while not indigenous to India, nevertheless ‘had been acclimatised to the soil
of India for several centuries’.2 The basic model for the anaphora was the Syriac
version of the anaphora of St James. It thus conformed to the classical West Syrian
shape. A table of sources at the end of the book confirms that the epiclesis is a
considerably abridged version of Syriac St James.3 The text of the epiclesis is as
follows:
Then the Deacon shall give warning to the people, saying:
How fearful is this hour, O my brethren, how aweful is this time, wherein the holy and
quickening Spirit descends and moves upon our Eucharist to the hallowing thereof. Let us
fall and prostrate ourselves with fear and trembling.
