Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 130

108
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1931
Constitutions" had laid down that the reading of the Gospel must be heard in a standing posture, and although this had been accepted all over the Christian world, western and eastern, the news of it had not reached the Indians, and they naturally continued to hear the Gospel in a sitting posture. We may remember in this connection that the Maldive Islands lie off the Malabar Coast, and were always in commercial contact with it.
Another independent source of evidence is the testimony of an early Muhammadan writer that Mani, the founder of Manichæism (born 215 A.D.), visited India to spread his rival creed, and this strengthens the Malabar tradition that the sorcerer Mani came to Malabar to pervert the converts of St. Thomas and that some of them succumbed to him. It is also known that, owing to persecution in Persia, Mani's followers migrated to India, China and other countries. One cannot say whether the well-known Manigramakars associated with Malabar Christians were Manichæans, but it is highly probable that Mani or his immediate disciples visited South India, and this lends support to the view that there were Christians in South India in the third century A.D.11
6. Conclusion.
Thus we have testimony from two independent sources about the mission of the Apostle Thomas in South India. On the one hand we have unequivocal evidence of the early Fathers that St. Thomas preached and died in India; on the other, we have in India itself a local tradition which receives more and more support as historical research advances. If the Apostle came to India at all he could not have normally avoided Malabar; and in Malabar itself we have a Christian community that claims Thomas as their founder and whose existence could be traced back to the early centuries of the Christian era. At least from the fourth century A.D. we have reliable evidence for the fact that Persian and Syrian Christians looked to Mylapore for the tomb of St. Thomas. One cannot understand why all these people looked for it on the barren shores of Mylapore, seeing that early Christian haunts were nearer home. If they, who knew the story of the Acts well, thought that it happened in Parthia or Afghanisthan (as the modern critics would have it), it is most strange, that they looked for Thomas' tomb and Thomas' converts in South India, as they actually did. Considering the cumulative weight of all these different lines of evidence, it might seem that the mission of St. Thomas in South India is as satisfactorily proved as the great majority of events in India's ancient history.
Note on Bibliography.
Among the writers who have denied that St. Thomas came to South India are Milne Rae, a former professor of the Madras Christian College, in his Syrian Church in India (1892), Richard Garbe, professor at Tubingen, in his Indien und das Christentum (1914), W. R. Philipps, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1903-04), and Rev. H. Thurston, S.J., in the Cath. Ency., vol. XIV. Among those who have affirmed it are Paulino, in India Orientalis Christiana (1794), Claudius Buchanan, in his Christian Researches in Asia (1814), Reginald Heber, in his Journal, Yule in his edition of Marco Polo, A. E. Medlycott, in his India and the Apostle Thomas (1905), Dahlmann, in his Die Thomas Legende (1912), A. Wath, in Der Hl. Thomas der Apostel Indiens (1925), Farquhar, in his two papers in the Bulletin of the John Ryland's Library (1926-27), and Father Hosten in various writings. Other works on the subject will be found among the footnotes. Dr. Mingana, the Syriac archivist, has brought out useful documents relevant to the subject in his Early Spread of Christianity in India printed in the Bulletin of John Ryland's Library (1926), but he adopts a non-committal attitude regarding the question of St. Thomas. Of the above writers, only Buchanan, Medlycott and Hosten studied the South Indian tradition on the spot. Buchanan, a pioneer Protestant missionary, after
11 About the Muhammadan testimony, see Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Art: Manichæiem). The Malabar tradition is that many families apostatized, and that when the first Syrian Colonists came (sometime in the middle of the fourth century) the Christian families (called Tarsai orthodox, Syr.) were few and in a desolate condition. Some identify Mani with Manikavasagar, the Tamil Saiva devotee, but this is not convincing: