The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c26.s1.73

c26.s1.73

Writers of later date, subsequent to the seventh century, profess to know the name of the city where the apostle suffered martyrdom, and call it variously Kalamina, Kalamita, Kalamēna, or Karamēna, and much ingenuity has been expended in futile attempts to identify this city. But the scene of the martyrdom is anonymous in the earlier versions of the tale, and Kalamina should be regarded as a place in fairyland which it is vain to try and locate on a map. The same observation applies to the attempts at the identification of the port variously called Sandarūk, Andrapolis, and so forth. The whole story is pure mythology, and the geography is as mythical as the tale itself. Its interest in the eyes of the historian of India is confined to the fact that it proves that the real Indian king, Gondopharēs, was remembered after his death, and was associated in popular belief with the apostolic mission to the Indians, and so, according to Origen, with the Parthians. Inasmuch as Gondopharēs certainly was a Parthian prince, and was too little known to the world in general to be named in a legend unless he really had some connexion with the introduction of Christianity into his dominions, it is permissible to believe that a Christian mission actually visited the Indo-Parthians of the northwestern frontier during his reign, whether or not that mission was conducted by St. Thomas in person. The traditional association of the name of the apostle with that of king Gondopharēs is in no way at variance with the generally received chronology of the reign of the latter as deduced from coins and an inscription.¹ On the other hand, it is to be observed that there is no trace of the subsequent existence of a Christian community in the dominions which had been ruled by Gondopharēs, and that if there be any truth in the tradition that the apostle was martyred at St. Thomas's Mount near Madras, he cannot possibly have suffered in the kingdom of Mazdai.² After much consideration, I am now of opinion that the story of the personal ministration and the martyrdom of St. Thomas in the realms of Gondopharēs and Mazdai should not be accepted. But unless a Christian mission connected by tradition with the rite of St. Thomas had visited the Indo-Parthian borderland it is difficult to imagine how the obscure name of Gondopharēs can have come into the story. If anybody chooses to believe that St. Thomas personally visited the Indo-Parthian kingdom his belief cannot be considered unreasonable. It is possible that, as Bishop Medlycott suggests, he may have first visited Gondopharēs, and then travelled to Southern India.