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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1924
Now, the tradition of the Syrian Christians of Malabar is that St. Thomas died in or very near tho place called Chinnamalai (Little Mount) near Mylapore. A Malayalam song composed on the 3rd of July 1601 A.D., has the following :
" In July seventy-two (A.D.) * On the third day in the morning, He arrives as a traveller, At Chinnamala in Mylapore-(Lines 325-328).
A cruel man took a big lance, And hard in the chest the Apostle, Stabbed, and they fled and hid themselves, All of them, the temple priests; And St. Thomas in the jungle on the beach, Fell on a stone and prayed. The angels made all this known. To Bishop Paulus (Paul). Bishop Paulus and the King And all their retinue, They ran and came to a rock Close to Kali's (Goddess'e) shrine (at Chinnamala). The lance found in the fresh wound Bishop Paulus quickly pulled out. When, for comfort, in a car They tried to take him away: 'No more comfort, my bliss is nigb,' So did St. Thomas say anon-(Lines 351-368).
And St. Thomas breathed his last"10_(Line 376). Rev. Fr. Bernard, from whose History the above lines are translated, says that "it is & fact that St. Thomas died near Chinnamala (Little Mount) and there is no question at all about it among the Syrian Christians." (Bernard's History, I, p. 32.) Another history in Malayalam says that "a temple priest threw a lance and he was hit hard and thereby he died at Chinnamala 11 in Mylapore in about A.D. 90 and was buried there."'13 It has to be Temarked here that Mylapore (or San Thomé), the Great Mount (or St. Thomas Mount) and the Little Mount (Chinnamalai) are three different localities. The Great Mount is about six miles and the Little Mount about two miles from Mylapore (or San Thomé), which is a suburb of Madras, about three and a half miles south of Fort St. George, Madras,13 Fort St. George and San Thomé are on the sea coast, while San Thomé, Little Mount and Great Mount are almost in the same straight line, making an angle of about 60° with the coast extending southward.
9 See the sketch map of San Thomé, Mylapore, and environs facing p. 111 of Medlycott's India and the Apostle Thomas and plate at p. 128, op. cit. Also the small but clear sketch on p. 368 of Yule and Cordier's Marco Polo, vol. II (London, 1903) and the picture on p. 356 of the same.
10 The song is given in full in a History of the St. Thomas Christians in Malayalam), vol. I, by Rev. Fr. Bernard of St. Thomas, T.O.C.D. (Pala, 1916).
11 But Bishop Medlycott, op. cit., p. 123, note 1, says that the Great Mount is traditionally reputed to bu the site of the Apostle's martyrdom. Vide also Marco Polo, II, 388.
13 Ittup's History of the Syrian Christian Church of Malabar, p. 80 (2nd Impression, Kottayam, 1906). This history in Malayalam was first published in 1869.
18 See Medlycott, op. cit., p. 123, notes 1 and 2; and Marco Polo, II, 356, noto 1.
