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APRIL, 1903.)
THE CONNECTION OF ST. THOMAS WITH INDIA.
147
Erasmus published this translation at Bâle in 1539, and the Greek MS. which he used appears to have contained, in addition, the document from which the above passage is taken, part inserted after chapter 1, and the rest after chapter 4. In Migne's Patrologia, Vol. 23, it is printed separately under the title “ Appendix de Vitis Apostolorum," as it forms no part of the work either of St. Jerome or of Sophronius. It is, in fact, a short account of the apostles who left no writings, and who were therefore quite outside the scope of St. Jeromo's work.
It is unnecessary to give here the reasons for regarding it as an altogether sparious addition. They may be found at length in R. Ceillier's Histoire Générale des Auteurs Sacrés, Paris, 1860, Vol. 6, p. 278; also in Migne's volume above mentioned, cols. 599 ff. These particulars may prevent people being misled, as many have been, by finding the above citation put forward in various books as a genuine statement by St. Jerome or by Sophronius.
The Abbé Huc, in the volume already mentioned, quotes the passage as written, if not by St. Jerome, then certainly by Sophronius; and he gives the apparently unmeaning reference “ Sanctus Hier. Catal, script. eocl. I., 120." In fact such part of his book as refers to the introduction of Christianity in India is full of mistakes. The Rev. C. E. Kennet of Madras, who followed him blindly, though he never mentions his name, gave the same reference. He also said (really translating from Huc) that St. Jerome "speaks of the mission of St. Thomas to India as “ą fact universally known and believed in his time." I cannot find that any such statement was made by St. Jerome in any of his writings.
General Sir Alexander Cunningham, writing of St. Thomas, has the following: -"The scene "of his death is said to have been the city of Calamina in India, Sophronius, c. viii., Dormivit in "civitate Calamins quae est Indiae.' ”
Now, in early Christian history, we have to reckon with a considerable number of persons bearing the name of Sophronius. But there is only one really notable writer among them; and, when we speak of Sophronius simply, we mean him and no other, and the person we mean is St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 633 to 637, a most volaminous Greek writer, many of whose works are very well known. And with writer whose works, or rather only some of them, occupy several large volumes of Migne's Patrologia Graeca, what are we to do with so vague a reference as "c. viii." ? It has no meaning for any Sophronius; not even for the comparatively insignificant friend of St. Jerome whose few little original works have all perished. It is also somewhat misleading to quote Greek writers as if they wrote in Latin,
The writing to which I am referring is General Cunningham's Archæological Survey of India, Vol. 5, Report for 1872-3, Calcutta, 1875, p. 60. There are other curious statements on the same page. For instance, in referring to the legends about St. Thomas, he speaks of "the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles written by Leucius and his copyist Abdias." This is a strange inversion: the Acts in question purport to have been written by Abdias, first bishop of Babylon in the first century; And they, or some of them, are supposed to have been really composed in later times by one Leucius, Manichean. Certainly Abdias could not have been the copyist of Leucius.
On the same page, the Latin form of the name Mazdai,-A good old Persian name, as Mr. Burkitt calls it, the name of the king who put St. Thomis to death, - is transformed from Mesdens into Meodeus. A reference is given to Col. H. Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither, London, 1866, Vol. 2, p. 376. Tbore the same mistake may be found, with several others. Col. Yule, not satisfied with writing "Meudens," actually put " (Mahadeva ?)" after it!
Another case of misquotation may be mentioned here. A passage has been given above from St. Gaudentius, Sermon 17, in which he states simply that St. Thomas is said to have been martyred "apud Indos." Hac (Vol. 1, p. 22) actually gives a reference to this Sermon, and says "Gaudence "comme Sophrone" states "qn'il mourut dans l'Inde, à Calamine." Kennet (p. 10) translated this, while affecting to be original :-"Gaudentius ways, like Sophronius, that he died in India at the
