A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.s3: Christianity
A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.s3
- Language
- English
Christianity
c20.s3.1
A persistent but doubtful tradition ascribes the introduction of Christianity in South India to St Thomas, in the first century A.D. Cosmas, the Alexandrian merchant who travelled in South India in 522, found a church at Quilon and another in Ceylon, both Nestorian. Copper-plate grants to Malabar Christians, the earliest of which is dated 774, show that they had then gathered native converts, though they were not yet very numerous. The strength of the community was increased by a number of immigrations of Christians from western countries, from Baghdad, Nineveh, Jerusalem and other places.
c20.s3.2
There was a Christian community at St Thomas Mount, but no authentic evidence of its condition is forthcoming before Marco Polo (1293) who first reports the story of the martyrdom of St Thomas on the Mount, but the shrine on the Greater Mount was visited by Hindus and Muslims as well as by the Christians themselves. Thirty years after Marco Polo heard the story of St Thomas, Friar Odoric found some fifteen houses of Nestorians beside the church, but the church itself was filled with idols. A century later Conti reckoned a thousand Nestorians in the city; yet early in the sixteenth century Barbosa found the church in ruins, with a Muslim fakir charged to keep a lamp in it.
c20.s3.3
Christian travellers in the Middle Ages occasionally complain of the paucity of Christians in South India and of the persecution to which they were sometimes subjected, and Friar Jordanus (1321-30) wrote enthusiastically of the great scope that India offered for missionary activity in the cause of Christianity.
c20.s3.4
Active propagation of Christianity, however, began only after the arrival of the Portuguese and of St Francis Xavier (c. 1545). But these efforts did not make much headway except among the lower classes, and what is more, they led to the rise of acute schisms and quarrels between the new Catholic Christians and the other sects that had already established themselves in different parts of the country. The coming of other Christian nations like the Dutch only added to the confusion. We have already seen that the Portuguese policy of turning religious propaganda to political use roused the resentment of even the tolerant rulers of Vijayanagar and their feudatories.
c20.s3.5
It cannot be said that in the period covered by this book Christianity exerted any potent influence on the life of the people as a whole.
c20.s3.6
*Archaeological Reports of Ceylon*, 1953, 1954 A. L. BASHAM: *The Wonder that was India* (London, 1954) R. G. BHANDARKAR: *Vaishnavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems* (Strassburg, 1913) ESTLIN CARPENTER: *Theism in Medieval India* (London, 1921) TARA CHAND: *Influence of Islam on Indian Culture* (Allahabad, 1936) SIR CHARLES ELIOT: *Hinduism and Buddhism*, 3 vols. (London, 1921) J. N. FARQUHAR: *An Outline of the Religious Literature of India* (London, 1920)