Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 56
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

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Page 205
________________ 179 OCTOBER, 1927 ] king's daughter, the feast being mentioned under Sandarûk and Andrapolis in the Acts, Thomas soon leaves for Ulterior India, the king and many of his people following after him to be baptised, and the king be. In the Passio coming a deacon. Cf. Bonnet, Acta Thoma, Lipsia, 1883; De Miraculis, pp. 97, 98, 101. Habban comes by ship to Caesarea, and in 7 days takes Thomas by ship to Andranopolis; after the marriage feast of the king's daughter, both sail away, and reach Gundaphar. Cf. Bonnet, op. cit., pp. 133, 135, 139. In the Syriac Acts we have: "a certain merchant, an Indian, happened to come into the South country from "(the British Museum MS. being injured here, the name of the place is not legible). Cf. Ind. Ant., 1903, p. 4. The Berlin and the Cambridge MS. have: "a certain merchant came from the South country." The missing word in the British Museum MS. is perhaps Hindustan, as Burkitt thought, cf. ibid., 160. I propose Mahuza with Medlycott, and suggest that the South country from which Habban came was for the author South India, Malabar or Mylapore, since none of our four earliest authorities seems to know that Gundaphar reigned in the North-West, while Indian and Mesopotamian accounts, from at least Barhebraeus (124686) place Gundaphar at Mylapore. Possibly Jacob of Sarug does the same (A.D. 500-521). I cannot consult him, but I know that he makes Habban ask of Gundaphar whether it is possible to build without foundations in the sca. The Malabar accounts have brought Habban from Mylapore to Mahuza and back to Mylapore. THOMAS CANA AND HIS COPPER-PLATE GRANT [My reasons for identifying Sandarûk with Cranganore are: (1) The name Antrayos (Andrew) given by the Thoma Parvam of 1601 to the king of Tiruvanchikulam (Cranganore). Compare it with Andrapolis, Andranopolis, Adrianopolis, and note that, as Sandarûk or Sanadrûk of the Edessan Syriac Acts is the name of an Edessan king, the third after Abgar, i.e., Sanatrue or Sanatrugh, Abgar's sister's son, the form Sanadrûk or Sandarûk is least reliable, unless like the other names it can be connected with same name like Andrew or Antrayos. The ending ûk must be compared with uth in Cosmas Indicopleustes' Mangaruth (for Mangalur, Mangalore). (2) The Malabar tradition assigns to Cranganore the marriage-feast of the king's daughter, which in the Acts and Passio takes place at Sandarûk, Andrapolis or Andranopolis. The De Miraculis, as we have said, places it in the first town of India, in Citerior India, where Thomas first landed, thus agreeing with our other three sources. (3) The author of the Passio says (Bonnet, op, cit., p. 139) that, soon after, Thomas sent a priest to Andranopolis to take charge of its church, and that in his own time the See of Thomas was still there, with a great multitude won over to Christ. The first bishop appointed to Andranopolis by Thomas was Dionysius, the king's son-in-law. In the Thoma Parvam we find that the sonin-law (T.K. Joseph translates by nephew') of the king of Tiruvanchikulam, i.e., Cranganore, is called Bishop Kêppa (Peter). The Dionysius of the Passio is therefore the Peter of the Thoma.Parvam. Possibly, one gives his heathen name, and the other his Christian name, or the name he took on becoming a bishop. As neither the Acts nor the De Miraculis has a name for Dionysius, and the name in the Passio differs from that in the Thoma Parvam, the Thoma Parvam is independent, while both the Passio and the Thoma Parvam confirm each other. [The Thoma Parvam is also independent of our earliest authorities for the name Andrew given to the king of Tiruvanchikulam. The Passio gives him no name; the De Miraculis neither; but the latter says, on the occasion when Sifur, Mazdai's general, meets Thomas, that present at the meeting was St. Thomas' deacon, the king of the marriage-feast celebrated at the first town in India where Thomas had landed. In the Acts the deacon present on the same occasion, to whom Thomas entrusts the people of the place, is called Xanthippus (Syriac Acts), Xenophon (Greek Acts). We must conclude that the deacon Xanthippus-Xenophon is no other than the deacon-king of Andrapolis. The meeting between Sifur and Thomas must therefore have taken place at Andrapolis: for the deacon-king must have returned to Andrapolis with his people after pursuing Thomas in the direction of Gundaphar's kingdom, perhaps to Gundaphar's capital, chiefly as Thomas remained at least two years in Gundaphar's dominions. The Thoma Parvam is independent of our other authorities in that it calls the king Andrew, and does not allude to his becoming a deacon. It is independent in other matters as well. Shall we say that the Thoma Parvam borrowed the name from the name Andrapolis, or Andranopolis or Sandarûk, when it calls Andrew king of Tiruvanchikulam? Shall we not say rather that the name Andrew is represented in Andrapolis or Andranopolis and is older than the Greek Acts? The same for Sandarak, if it can be connected with a name like Andrew? We have then the very curious fact that the following Greek names Xanthippus, Xenophon, Andrew, Dionysius, Pelagia (the name of the king's daughter), Andrapolis, Andranopolis, Adrianopolis, all refer to Cranganore. Compare this with the Greek influence from Alexandria and perhaps Mesopotamia exercised on the Malabar coast in the first two or three centuries of our era, and with the fact that we have at Kuravalangad, in Malabar, a Christian bell with an inscription of which we suppose the characters to be Greek rather than anything else. Note also that the Passio states that an inscription on the tomb of Pelagia declared in Greek and in the Greek character: "Here rests Pelagia, the spouse of Bishop Dionysius, who was the daughter of Thomas the Apostle." [The Passio agrees in so many matters with the Thoma Parvam alone, while yet differing from it in substantial points, that we must say both have preserved details older and more reliable than the Gnostic dcts we now have. The Passio is quoted by Isidore of Seville (d. 636) and in the Mozarabic liturgy. It is

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