Indian Antiquary Vol 32

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 12

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
that he started from Jerusalem. That would involve a preliminary journey by land. The other Latin version says Habban came to Caesarea by ship, and met the apostle there, and together they went by sea all the way.
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[JANUARY, 1903.
Instead of Sandaruk, the Greek has Andrapolis. The first Latin version does not name the city, but says the journey was done within three months (instead of the usual three years), and that they arrived "in Indiam citeriorem" and "ingressi sunt primam Indiae civitatem." The other version names" Andranopolis," and says the apostle got there from Caesarea in seven days "plenis velis et prosperis ventis." The heading of the second Act seems to imply that Sandaruk was not in what was considered India proper at the time of the writer.
(c) St. Thomas next "entered into the realm of India and went to the court of Gudnaphar the King of India." The Greek says "when he came into the cities of India" he went to the King in question. The first Latin version has ad ulteriores Indiae partes processerat," and that the apostle "in ulteriorem Indiam commorari." The other names King Gudnaphar's city as Elioforum, Hienoforum, or Hyroforum, and speaks of a mountain Gazus.
(7) St. Thomas preached "throughout all India." This might imply a number of years. The Greek has the same; the first Latin version has nothing to the point; the other sys "profectus est ... ad Indiam superiorem."
(e) St. Thomas goes to the city of King Mazdai, where he is put to death, outside the city, on a mountain. The name of the city is not given in the Syriac, Greek or Latin Acts. Calamina is the name in some ecclesiastical writings; we shall come to them afterwards.
(f) To the above indications of place we may add that the body of St. Thomas was afterwards carried away to the "West." The Greek says to Mesopotamia; the Latin, to Edissa or Edessa.
These particulars do not help us to any definite ideas of place.
I do not know if any one has attempted to locate the seaport city Sandaruk or Andrapolis. If we take the Latin to guide us, we should, I suppose, locate it on the coast west of the Indus; and that would be the meaning of "India citerior."
It is unfortunate that the name of the place from which Ḥabban came, cannot be deciphered in the Syriac text. It would help us to locate King Gudnaphar, a most important point.
The statement in the Syriac, that the relics of the apostles were carried away to the "West," is worth remark. As we shall see further on, the fact that the relics were taken from India to Edessa rests on sources of information better than these Acts.
2. Proper Names.
A table of all the proper names that occur in the Acts is given on the opposite page. Mr. Burkitt points out that most of the names in the Syriac text are not Syriac, but old Persian. Koresh (Cyrus), as in the Sachau MS. (misspelt Karish in the British Museum MS.), Mazdai, Vizan, Manashar, are all, he says, good old Persian names. Mazdai was the name of the well-known satrap of Babylonia known to the Greeks as Magãos, who died 328 B. C. Sandaruk reminds him of a similar word at the beginning of the essentially Syriac Romance of Julian," a work assigned by Wright to the 6th century. (See Short History of Syriac Literature, London, 1894, p. 101.)
Mygdonia (or Magdonia) is another name for Nisibis. Habban has a Semitic look. (Early Christianity outside the Roman Empire, pp. 68 and 72; Journal of Theological Studies, Jan. 1900.) The fact that Kōresh (Cyrus) has become in the Greek Xapíotos, instead of Kupos, is suggestive of a blundering translator, and seems to be one of the many minor indications that the original was Syriac.
The Persian names, so far as they prove anything, seem to exclude the idea that the scene of St. Thomas' death was in South India.