The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c26.s1.76

c26.s1.76

The alleged connexion of the apostle with Southern India and the Mailapur shrine near Madras, reverenced as San Thomé by the Portuguese, may be considered conveniently in this place. The traditions of the 'Christians of St. Thomas' on the western, or Malabar coast, assert that the apostle, coming from Socotra in A. D. 52, landed at Cranganore (Muziris of Pliny and the *Periplus*) on that coast, and laid the foundations of seven Christian centres in the province; that he passed over to the Malabar or Coromandel coast, where he suffered martyrdom near Mailapur; and that subsequent persecution extirpated the Christian churches of Coromandel. Bishop Medlycott, in a treatise full of abstruse learning, has endeavoured to prove the historical truth of this tradition, but, in my judgement, without complete success. Dr. J. H. Ogilvie, on the other hand, finds as 'the only safe verdict'—'that St. Thomas preached the Gospel of Christ in India is a certainty; that he laboured in the Punjab, in the territories of King Gondopharēs, is extremely probable; that South India was a later field of his labours, and the scene of his martyrdom, is a tradition unverified, and now in all likelihood unverifiable, though not beyond the bounds of possibility.’¹ The Mailapur legend of the martyrdom, like that of the *Acta*, may be purely mythical, and the Christians of Malabar may have applied the legend of the *Acta* to their own country. But, although the alleged martyrdom, whether in the kingdom of Mazdai or near Mailapur, may be confidently rejected as unhistorical, it must be admitted that a personal visit of the apostle to Southern India was easily feasible in the conditions of the time, and that there is nothing incredible in the traditional belief that he came by way of Socotra, where an ancient Christian settlement undoubtedly existed. The actual fact of such a personal visit cannot be either proved or disproved. I am now satisfied that the Christian Church of Southern India is extremely ancient, whether it was founded by St. Thomas in person or not, and that its existence may be traced back to the third century with a high degree of probability. Mr. Milne Rae carried his scepticism too far when he attributed the establishment of the Christian congregations to missionaries from the banks of the Tigris in the fifth or sixth century.²