________________
150
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1903.
authorities at Rome have ever given any real support to the modern belief that St. Thomas was martyred near Madras, and buried at San Thomé or Mylapore: there may be documents in which the idea is mentioned, but never, I think, as a fact established ; always with some qualifying phrase, so as to leave the question open. To judge from quotations, the Syriac liturgical books, which contain some details of the apostle's career, give no support to this modern supposition. The sapposition may be correct; but it is still only a supposition. Marco Polo must have had something to go apon, and so must others who followed him,- Odoric, for instance, about 1322; but had they anything better than the current talk of the Nestorians then in India and China ? The Indian Nestorians would naturally have easily come to the belief in the apostolic origin of their church, just as now some of their Catholic descendants pretend they never had any Nestorian ancestors, but were always Catholics, in communion with Rome. (See G. T. Mackenzie: Christianity in Travancore: Trivandrum, 1901.) Nevertheless, we know from history that they were Nestorians antil the Catholic missionaries took them in hand in the 16th century and converted them.
Anyhow, when the Portuguese arrived in Southern India, they found among the Nestorians the story already known from mediæval travellers, that the tomb of St. Thomas was at Mylapore, or San Thomé, as the Portuguese afterwards called it, near Madras. The tomb was opened in 1521; some' remains were found and were removed to Goa. These are the relice alluded to by Bickell, quoted above. They or part of them bave, I understand, been since returned to Mylapore, and are enshrined in the cathedral built over the tomb.
Of the discovery, and of the translation to Goa, there must be or ought to be anthentic acts in the archives of Goa or Portugal; for, no carelessness was likely to occur in matters of such religious interest and importance. I do not know at present if the documents have ever been published; and, unfortunately, the accounts of the discovery, repeated from book to book, are disfigured by an absurd story, which, if true, only shews the credulity of the Portuguese. A stone, with a cross and inscription in unknown characters cat opon it, was discovered about 1547 at St. Thomas' Mount near Madras; and a learned Bråbmaņ was sent for, who interpreted the inscription into a long account confirmatory of St. Thomas' martyrdom in the locality. Another learned Brâhman was brought from a distant country, and, independently of the former one, he gave the same interpretation. It never occurs to the writers who repeat this story, that the stone is still at the Mount church, and that they may go and look at it, or look at the pictures that have been published of it, and see for themselves that the inscription, which these learned Brahmaņs are alleged to have read in such an extremely copious and satisfying way, consists only of a few words in the Pahlavi character. Dr. E. W. West, who has last dealt with the record, has interpreted these few words as most probably meaning :-"(He) whom "the soffering of the selfsame Messiah, the forgiving and apraising, (has) saved, (is) offering
the plea whose origin (was) the agony of this" (see his article on Inscriptions around Crosses in Southern India, in Epigraphia Indica, Vol. 4, 1896-97, p. 174 ff.). Dr. Burnell was inclined to refer the record to the 7th or 8th century (see his article on some Pahlavi Inscriptions in Southern India, in Indian Antiquary, Vol. 3, 1874, p. 308 ff.; see, also, Mr. Sewell's List of Antiquarian Remains in the Madras Presidency, Vol. 1, 1882, p. 176).
These discoveries near Madras do not, - it seems to me, - help us towards the identification of Calamina, though they have served to convince many persons, to their satisfaction, that Calamina and Mylapore are one and the same place. Huc (Vol. 1, p. 24), following the Abbé Rénaudot (1718), says that Mylapore in the middle ages was known to Arabic writers as "Bétama on Best Thoma, la maison, l'église de Thomas." Kennet copies Hoc. But the place indicated, Batama or Tanamah, was evidently not in India, bat much farther east; the same is perhaps an error for Natoma, the Natuma Islands, in the China Sea (see Yale : Cathay, eto. Vol. 1, p. civ.). In any cale, it is a wholly gratuitous desumption that the word has anything to do with any Thomas.
