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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
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NOVEMBER, 1928
the coast near Madras), near Milon123 (Meilan ? Mayila-pur). Mylapore had a fishery of pearls at a much later date; it had cocoanut-trees, and at least wild date-trees123 yielding liquor and sugar; its crabs of enormous size may have been sea-turtles. If that were so, that monastery of 200 monks should have existed at least 100 years before, say, in A.D. 220-30, when the Acts of Thomas was composed in Edessa. The first monks must have known at Mylapore people who had known there the Apostle Thomas or his immediate successors, the priest Sifur and the deacon Prince Vizan. We thus reach down to St. Thomas himself at Mylapore. Mylapore is Calamina. It was Calamina for Bar Hebraeus in 1246-86, and the Mount of India on which St. Thomas preached and was killed was for Bar Hebraeus near Calamina. It was Little Mount. Had we not this proof, we would have sufficient proof from Malabar that St. Thomas died and was martyred at Mylapore. The whole of the Malabar tradition 124 supposes it, and that tradition, as we now see, was inherited by the present Christians from those who lived in Malabar before126 the arrival of Thomas Cana in A.D. 345.
The existence of a monastery of St. Thomas at Mylapore is borne out by what we find in Ittüp's History (Malayalam, Kottayam, 1869, pp. 81-82). After the death of St. Thomas and before the arrival of Thomas Cana in 345, two of the 72 disciples of Mâr Augen (Agwin, Augin), named Sabor and Sabri Yêsu, came and looked after the church (of Malabar and Mylapore ?). They were students of the great college on the hill north-east of the town of Saibin (Nisibis ?). These details are found in the genuine records still kept at Antioch in the archives of the Patriarch. Sabór died here. Sabri Yêsu returned to his own country of Besanaherim, and wrote and kept in the college an account of the Church founded by St. Thomas in Malabar. Thus Ittup, in extracts translated by Mr. Joseph.
I believe that the names Sabôr and Sabri Yêsu belong to A.D. 825128, while the rest seems to belong to c. A.D. 363. Ittup, I learn from Mr. T. K. Joseph, mentions (p. 95 of an edition of his work, dated 1896) two bishops Mår Sabor and Mar Aprôt who came to India from Babylon in A.D. 825, in the ship of the merchant Savaris. This Savaris is no other than Sabir 168 or Yêsu. Some call him BArêsu ; others Job; others Towrio and Thor. The names which Ittập should have had for the much earlier period are, I think, Yônån and Zado8, contempora. ries, and successive abbots of the monastery of St. Thomas in India near (or below) the black island. Yonan had met in Egypt Mar Augen or Agwin, writes the historiographer Zado, Yonan's successor. And we know that Agwin died on the 21st of Nisan, 674 of the era of the Greeks, i.e. April, A.D. 363. On the Convent of Eugene, see Assemani, Bibl. Orient., t. I. 524. It is said that Augîn came from the Nitrean Desert in Egypt with seventy disciples to Nisibis and founded near it, on Mount Izla, a monastery where he gathered 350 monks. Many believe that monasticism for both sexes existed at an even earlier date in East Syria. Cf. Fortescue, The Lesser Eastern Churches, 42-43, 110. Crowds of monks came daily from India, Persia, and Ethiopia to St. Jerome in Palestine (A.D. 386-420). The pilgrim lady Sylvia (Ætheria) already speaks of the many pilgrims from Armenia, Persia, India, Ethiopia and Egypt who came to
133 Mion, six days from Maron. The name Milon seems to be deriva ble from Maliarpha (tho old form of the name Mylapore, also called Mayilai).
133 The date-trees of Mylapore are not real date palms, but palmyra palms, yielding" liquor and fugar", i.e. toddy and a kind of dark-red sugar of big crystals, called panankallangam in Malayalam.
134 The extant versions of Malabar tradition do say that St. Thomas lies buried in Mylapore. These are but 400 years old. And from these to infer that in, say. A.D. 150 Malabar tradition said that it was St. Thomas the Apostle himself that lay buried in Mylapore-if there was any tomb at all there at that time is not reasonable. From the tradition of 1500 to that of 150 is a far cry indeed. We do not know at all what Malabar or Mylapore tradition about the Mylapore tomb was in A.D. 100, 200, 300, 400, or 800. W. know Cosmas (635 A.D.) has not a single word about St. Thomas in Malabar.
136 Wo do not know for certain whether before 345 A.D. the Malabar Christians regarded 8t. Thomas a thoir apostle or not. Certain vorsions of Malabar tradition do indeed say that it was Thomas Cans who introduced Christianity into Malabar. Malabar tradition is a hopelem muddle.
136 Sabor and Sabri Yesu are regarded by Ittup as quite different from Sabor and Prodh of 326 A.D.
