THE MONIST

IN

ST. THOMAS IN INDIA.1

N determining how much the religions of India owe to Christianity, our first task must be to examine the earliest possibilities of the extension of Christianity into India and to test the oldest records of this extension.

We ought first to observe that the assumption of the introduction of Christian ideas into India by way of Alexandria is very improbable. This has been proved conclusively by J. Kennedy. The commercial intercourse by way of Alexandria between the Roman empire and southern India, which is abundantly attested for the first two Christian centuries by the discovery in southern India of Roman coins. (from Augustus down), had ceased by the beginning of the third century. At this time commerce took its way to the farther Orient partly across the Persian Gulf and partly over the Ethiopian Adulis in the Red Sea. This was due to Caracalla's massacre in Alexandria in 215 A. D. which destroyed the significance of Alexandria in the commerce of the world. It also put an end to the colony of Indian merchants in Alexandria, of which Dio Chrysostom in Trajan's reign gives an account (Orat. XXXII), and with it to the direct commercial intercourse between Alexandria and India, for the Roman coins found in southern India stop abruptly with Caracalla.

'Translated by Lydia G. Robinson from the first chapter of Part II of the author's work, Indien und das Christentum (Tübingen, 1914). In the bibliographical references the following abbreviations will be observed: ERE, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics; IA, Indian Antiquary; JAOS, Journal of the American Oriental Society; JRAS, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society; ZDMG, Zeitschrift der Morgenländischen Gesellschaft.

'JRAS, 1907, pp. 478-479, 953-955.

But might not the Indian colony in Alexandria have brought about the transmission of Christian influences to India before 215 A. D.? Just here lies the great improbability which we have intimated above. These Indian merchants, presumably Indians of Dravidian race, were ignorant people, according to the testimony of Dio Chrysostom (Orat., XXXV). They would have taken no more interest in religious questions than did the Greek traders of their time. The absolute indifference of the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea towards religious matters has been mentioned elsewhere (See Open Court, July, 1914).

Moreover the Indians in Alexandria could hardly have heard anything of Christianity in the time of Antoninus, since the Alexandrian Christians at that time were mainly Greeks and were compelled to hold their meetings secretly because Christianity was forbidden. It would therefore have been much easier for Christians to have received information about the Buddhist religion from Indian Buddhists who chanced to live in Alexandria than the reverse, since the Indians were not compelled to keep their religion

secret.

Isolated references of a later date to Indians at Alexandria prove nothing with regard to the possibility of a transmission of Christian doctrines. Such a reference is the one to the visit of the Brahman who "related incredible things" in the house of the former consul Severus in Alexandria about 500 A.D., as we learn from Damascius, or the acquaintance of a few Indian scholars with the astronomy and astrology of Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries-a knowledge, moreover, which need not in the least have come directly from Alexandria, but might equally well have been transmitted through the famous school of Edessa which later moved to Nisibis. A popular religion is not affected by the forms of a strange faith as suddenly as the conver

'In Photii Bibliotheca, ed. Bekker, II, p. 340, in J. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 956.

sion of single individuals often takes place in consequence of the appealing and convincing talk of missionaries; but influences of this kind presuppose a gradual infiltration of foreign ideas during a somewhat long and close contact between two religious communities. Hence we must here take a very different standpoint from that involved in the discussion of the relation of Buddhist and Gospel narratives to each other. Strange stories travel from mouth to mouth and from people to people and finally become clothed in the garb of another religion; but dogmas and forms of worship are adopted by the followers of a different religion only in case of direct, lasting and intimate intercourse, when the ground for the adoption of such foreign elements is prepared by similarity in religious disposition or mental inclination.

Accordingly if Alexandria is not to be taken into consideration for the transmission of Christian ideas into India, the next question is, what value has the tradition that the apostle Thomas preached Christianity in India?

In the Acta S. Thomae apostoli, the original Syrian text of which was written in the first half of the third century, it is reported that Christ sold his slave Thomas into India to build a palace for Gondophares (Gundaphorus), the king of the Indians, who had sent to Jerusalem for a skilled architect. Thomas journeyed by water to northern India and received great sums from the king with which to do the building, but he spent all of it upon the poor for benevolent purposes. When Thomas was about to be punished with death for this by the enraged king, he was saved by the statement that he had built a palace in heaven for the king with these treasures. The king saw this palace in his dream, whereupon Thomas succeeded in converting the king and his brother Gad to Christianity. But later, after numerous miracles and conversions in the neighboring kingdom, whither he had betaken himself at the request

of the general Siforus, he was executed by lance thrusts at the command of King Mazdai (Misdeus) and buried on the scene of his martyrdom.

This place is not named in any version of the Acts of St. Thomas. Beginning with the seventh century it is called Kaλauívη in Greek and Calamina in Latin sources. According to ecclesiastical tradition the bones of St. Thomas were later taken from this place to Edessa and in 394 were transferred from a little old church into a large basilica.

A tradition differing from this Thomas legend exists among the native Christians in southern India on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel who regard the apostle Thomas as the founder of their church and call themselves Thomas Christians even to-day. According to their tradition St. Thomas is said to have come from the island Sokotara to Malabar in the year. 52. They also shift Calamina, the place of his martyrdom and burial, to Mailapur near Madras. However the earliest evidence for this localization is found in Marco Polo at the end of the 13th century.

Those who believe in such stories can only reconcile the contradiction existing between these two traditions by assuming that St. Thomas made two different missionary journeys to India.

The tradition of the Thomas Christians in southern India has not found credence in scholarly circles in recent years, except in isolated cases. Thus R. Collins has expressed his conviction that St. Thomas was the apostle of Edessa as well as of Malabar. W. Germann' regards as historical the evangelization by St. Thomas of southern India and

'To-day the place is called "St. Thomé" as the Portuguese named it upon their arrival in India on the basis of the legend found there among the Nestorians.

'IA, IV, p. 155.

Die Kirche der Thomaschristen. Gütersloh, 1877.

the Indo-Iranian borderlands and also believes that the apostle died at Mailapur near Madras and that his body was removed from there to Edessa. We can understand this of a man who has the standpoint that "without the greatest miracle (the resurrection of Christ) the Christian faith would be vain" (p. 32). A. E. Medlycott, Bishop of Tricomia, shares Germann's conviction in all points without, however, being able to prove it by the mass of his material which, though scholarly, has little importance for the question of historicity. Lately a young investigator, Karl Heck, has followed in the footsteps of these men with an investigation which bears witness of scientific seriousness and comprehensive knowledge, but of course cannot prove the impossible. Heck substantiates the identification of Mailapur with Calamina by explaining that Calamina is only a "city of the kingdom of Kola" on the coast of Coromandel (pp. 34, 42). In Mazdai he recognizes Mahâdeva, a king of southern India (p. 19). These things are purely imaginary and we will see later on that a very different conclusion has been drawn from the names Calamina and Mazdai. Heck's expositions in the first part of his essay on the dispersion of the Jews in the time of Christ. are interesting. In his opinion the Jewish communities. in the Orient were the objective points for St. Thomas and the stages of his alleged journeys (pp. 13, 38, 40). We must acknowledge also that on page 39 Heck at least assumes the land route by way of Edessa, Nisibis and Seleucia for the apostle's missionary journey to the kingdom of Gondophares, and not the ocean route as does the narrative in the Acts of St. Thomas.

On the whole the view has long prevailed in scientific circles that not only the tradition of the Thomas Christians in southern India but also the legend in the Acts of 'India and the Apostle Thomas. London, 1905.

Karl Heck (Professor in Radolfzell), Hat der heilige Apostel Thomas in Indien das Evangelium gepredigt? Eine historische Untersuchung. 1911.