ST.

THOMAS IN INDIA
Author(s): Richard Garbe
Source: The Monist, Vol. 25, No. 1 (JANUARY, 1915), pp. 1-27
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27900517
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 VOL. XXV. JANUARY, 1915 NO. 1

THE MONIST
ST. THOMAS IN INDIA.1

IN Christianity,
determining how
our first task much
must be tothe religions
examine the of India owe to
earliest possibilities of the extension of Christianity into
India and to test the oldest records of this extension.
We ought first to observe that the assumption of the
introduction of Christian ideas into India by way of Alex
andria is very improbable. This has been proved conclu
sively by J. Kennedy.2 The commercial intercourse by way
of Alexandria between the Roman empire and southern In
dia, which is abundantly attested for the first two Christian
centuries by the discovery in southern India of Roman coins
(from Augustus down), had ceased by the beginning of
the third century. At this time commerce took its way
to the farther Orient partly across the Persian Gulf and
partly over the Ethiopian Adulis in the Red Sea. This
was due to Caracalla's massacre in Alexandria in 215
A. D. which destroyed the significance of Alexandria in
the commerce of the world. It also put an end to the
colony of Indian merchants in Alexandria, of which Dio
Chrysostom in Trajan's reign gives an account (Orat.
XXXII), and with it to the direct commercial intercourse
between Alexandria and India, for the Roman coins found
in southern India stop abruptly with Caracalla.
1 Translated by Lydia G. Robinson from the first chapter of Part II of the
author's work, Indien und das Christentum (T?bingen, 1914). In the biblio
graphical references the following abbreviations will be observed: ERE, En
cyclop dia of Religion and Ethics; I A, Indian Antiquary; JAOS, Journal of
the American Oriental Society; JRAS, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society;
ZDMG, Zeitschrift der Morgenl?ndischen Gesellschaft.
* JRAS, 1907, pp. 478-479, 953-955.

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2 THE MONIST.

But might not the Indian colony in Alexandria have

brought about the transmission of Christian influences to
India before 215 A. D. ? Just here lies the great improba
bility Vhich we have intimated above. These Indian mer
chants, presumably Indians of Dravidian race, were ig
norant people, according to the testimony of Dio Chrysos
tom (Orat., XXXV). They would have taken no more
interest in religious questions than did the Greek traders
of their time. The absolute indifference of the author of
the Periplus of the Red Sea towards religious matters has
been mentioned elsewhere (See Open Court, July, 19x4).
Moreover the Indians in Alexandria could hardly have
heard anything of Christianity in the time of Antoninus,
since the Alexandrian Christians at that time were mainly
Greeks and were compelled to hold their meetings secretly
because Christianity was forbidden. It would therefore
have been much easier for Christians to have received in
formation about the Buddhist religion from Indian Bud
dhists who chanced to live in Alexandria than the reverse,
since the Indians were not compelled to keep their religion
secret.
Isolated references of a later date to Indians at Alex
andria prove nothing with regard to the possibility of a
transmission of Christian doctrines. Such a reference is the
one to the visit of the Brahman who "related incredible
things" in the house of the former consul Severus in Alexan
dria about 500 A.D., as we learn from Damascius,3 or the ac
quaintance of a few Indian scholars with the astronomy and
astrology of Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries?a
knowledge, moreover, which need not in the least have come
directly from Alexandria, but might equally well have been
transmitted through the famous school of Edessa which
later moved to Nisibis. A popular religion is not affected
by the forms of a strange faith as suddenly as the conver
In Photii Bibliotheca, ed. Bekker, II, p. 340, in J. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 956.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 3
sion of single individuals often takes place in consequence
of the appealing and convincing talk of missionaries; but
influences of this kind presuppose a gradual infiltration of
foreign ideas during a somewhat long and close contact
between two religious communities. Hence we must here
take a very different standpoint from that involved in the
discussion of the relation of Buddhist and Gospel narra
tives to each other. Strange stories travel from mouth
to mouth and from people to people and finally become
clothed in the garb of another religion; but dogmas and
forms of worship are adopted by the followers of a differ
ent religion only in case of direct, lasting and intimate
intercourse, when the ground for the adoption of such for
eign elements is prepared by similarity in religious disposi
tion or mental inclination.
Accordingly if Alexandria is not to be taken into con
sideration for the transmission of Christian ideas into In
dia, the next question is, what value has the tradition that
the apostle Thomas preached Christianity in India?
In the Acta S. Thomae apostoli, the original Syrian
text of which was written in the first half of the third cen
tury, it is reported that Christ sold his slave Thomas into
India to build a palace for Gondophares (Gundaphorus),
the king of the Indians, who had sent to Jerusalem for a
skilled architect. Thomas journeyed by water to northern
India and received great sums from the king with which
to do the building, but he spent all of it upon the poor for
benevolent purposes. When Thomas was about to be pun
ished with death for this by the enraged king, he was saved
by the statement that he had built a palace in heaven for
the king with these treasures. The king saw this palace
in his dream, whereupon Thomas succeeded in converting
the king and his brother Gad to Christianity. But later,
after numerous miracles and conversions in the neighbor
ing kingdom, whither he had betaken himself at the request

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 4 THE MONIST.

of the general Siforus, he was executed by lance thrusts at

the command of King Mazdai (Misdeus) and buried on
the scene of his martyrdom.
This place is not named in any version of the Acts of
St. Thomas. Beginning with the seventh century it is
called a a in Greek and Calamina in Latin sources.
According to ecclesiastical tradition the bones of St.
Thomas were later taken from this place to Edessa and in
394 were transferred from a little old church into a large
basilica.
A tradition differing from this Thomas legend exists
among the native Christians in southern India on the coasts
of Malabar and Coromandel who regard the apostle
Thomas as the founder of their church and call them
selves Thomas Christians even to-day. According to their
tradition St. Thomas is said to have come from the island
Sokotara to Malabar in the year 52. They also shift
Calamina, the place of his martyrdom and burial, to Maila
pur near Madras. However the earliest evidence for this
localization is found in Marco Polo at the end of the 13th
century.4
Those who believe in such stories can only reconcile
the contradiction existing between these two traditions by
assuming that St. Thomas made two different missionary
journeys to India.
The tradition of the Thomas Christians in southern India
has not found credence in scholarly circles in recent years,
except in isolated cases. Thus R. Collins has expressed his
conviction that St. Thomas was the apostle of Edessa as
well as of Malabar.5 W. Germann6 regards as historical
the evangelization by St. Thomas of southern India and
4 To-day the place is called "St. Thome" as the Portuguese named it upon
their arrival in India on the basis of the legend found there among the Nes
torians.
? A, IV, p. 155.
9 Die Kirche der Thomaschristen. G?tersloh, 1877.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 5
the Indo-Iranian borderlands and also believes that the
apostle died at Mailapur near Madras and that his body
was removed from there to Edessa. We can understand
this of a man who has the standpoint that "without the
greatest miracle (the resurrection of Christ) the Christian
faith would be vain" (p. 32). A. E. Medlycott, Bishop of Tri
comia/shares Germann's conviction in all points without,
however, being able to prove it by the mass of his material
which, though scholarly, has little importance for the ques
tion of historicity. Lately a young investigator, Karl
Heck, has followed in the footsteps of these men with an
investigation8 which bears witness of scientific seriousness
and comprehensive knowledge, but of course cannot prove
the impossible. Heck substantiates the identification of
Mailapur with Calamina by explaining that Calamina is
only a "city of the kingdom of Kola" on the coast of Coro
mandel (pp. 34, 42). In Mazdai he recognizes Mah?
deva, a king of southern India (p. 19). These things are
purely imaginary and we will see later on that a very dif
ferent conclusion has been drawn from the names Cala
mina and Mazdai. Heck's expositions in the first part of
his essay on the dispersion of the Jews in the time of Christ
are interesting. In his opinion the Jewish communities
in the Orient were the objective points for St. Thomas and
the stages of his alleged journeys (pp. 13, 38, 40). We
must acknowledge also that on page 39 Heck at least as
sumes the land route by way of Edessa, Nisibis and Se
leucia for the apostle's missionary journey to the kingdom
of Gondophares, and not the ocean route as does the narra
tive in the Acts of St. Thomas.
On the whole the view has long prevailed in scientific
circles that not only the tradition of the Thomas Chris
tians in southern India but also the legend in the Acts of
7 India and the Apostle Thomas. London, 1905.
8Karl Heck (Professor in Radolfzell), Hat der heilige Apostel Thomas
in Indien das Evangelium gepredigt? Eine historische Untersuchung. 1911.

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 6 THE MONIST.

St. Thomas lacks any historical foundation. But in re

cent decades, especially in France, England and America,
there has been a reaction, since the discovery of coins and
the inscription of Takht-?-Bah? have shown that a king
Guduphara (= Gondophares) reigned over Parthia and
the Indo-Iranian borderland in the first half of the first
century after Christ, and hence that the Indian king who
appears in the first part of the Acts of St. Thomas is his
torically attested for the place and time of the alleged
apostolate of Thomas. This fact has made a strong im
pression, and in a number of prominent scholars has pro
duced the conviction that a trustworthy recollection is the
basis of that part of the Thomas legend in which the
apostle carries on his work in Parthia and northwestern
India. This conviction found further support in considera
tions regarding the international commercial intercourse
of those times.
The first to raise the question as to whether contem
porary relations actually existed between the apostle
Thomas and the king Gondophares who has been proved
historical by the discovery of coins, was Reinaud, in the
year 1849. But the first to express himself in this sense
with any attempt at a scientific basis is the eminent French
Indianist Sylvain L?vi;9 nevertheless in the last sentence
of his article (p. 42) the journey of the apostle Thomas to
India is characterized in an apposition as r?el ou imagi
naire. Those who have declared themselves to be com
pletely, or almost completely, convinced of the historical
character of this journey are E. Washburn Hopkins,10 W.
R. Phillips,11 J. F. Fleet,12 W. W. Hunter,13 Vincent A.
Smith,14 G. Grierson,15 and of German investigators mainly
Journal Asiatique, 1897, I, pp. 27f. "India Old and New, p. 141.
? A, XXXII, pp. If, 145f. "JRAS, 1905, pp. 223f.
u The Indian Empire, 3d ed., p. 286.
" The Early History of India, 2d ed., pp. 218-221.
tt JRAS, 1907, p. 312; similarly ERE, II, p. 5486.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 7

the Jesuit Joseph Dahlmann, with whose book on the sub

ject16 we must occupy ourselves more closely.
The English and American scholars just mentioned
ha\^e not perceived that they have become victims of a fal
lacy. From the fact that the king of the Thomas legend
is historical they have forthwith drawn the conclusion that
the apostolate of Thomas in the domain of this king is also
historical, and have overlooked the fact that some well
known personage from history, and particularly a king,
happens to appear with extraordinary frequency in legends
behind which no one would suspect an historical event.
This observation does not apply to Dahlmann, for he has
kept before him the possibility "that into the fabric of a
legend some actually historical features may be woven,
and yet if this were proved little would be gained for the
question of the authenticity or unauthenticity of the legen
dary tradition. For particular geographical and historical
features may be woven into the legend?the names of his
torical personages, circumstances whose reality is beyond
question, citations of locality which correspond to the truth
?and yet the tradition as such may lack intrinsic authen
ticity."17 But I can not find that Dahlmann has allowed
himself to be guided in his investigation by the critical
spirit which speaks in these words.
Further, Dahlmann says on page 6: "In a dark and
suspicious corner of early Christian literature where we
push step by step up the luxuriant lattice of free discovery
we see we are lost when we take the Apocrypha for guide.
Poetic fancy there carries on so capricious a play that it
seems impossible to draw the line between truth and in
vention, historical tradition and arbitrary adornment. The

Die Thomas-Legende und die ?ltesten historischen Beziehungen des

Christentums zum fernen Osten im Lichte der indischen Altertumskunde
(Number 107, a sequel to the Stimmen aus Maria-Laach. Freiburg i. Br.,
1912).
" Op. cit., pp. 12-13.

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8 THE MONIST.

story of the apostle's journey to India is no exception

to this rule." These remarks are perfectly correct; but in
stead of applying them practically Dahlmann utilizes the
Acts of St. Thomas as a historical source of the greatest
significance, although it "betrays not the slightest knowl
edge of Indian relations, customs and usages or even of
Indian geography."18
By drawing upon what we know with regard to the
ocean traffic and commercial relations of the first century
A. D. and with regard to the art of the Gandh?ra country
(i. e., the Kabul valley and surrounding territory) and all
other material Avhich bears upon the question, Dahlmann
with his usual eloquence has tried to prove what it is his
heart's desire to believe, but what nevertheless can not be
proved. He finds himself here, as in several previous works,
in the deplorable position of fighting with great scholar
ship, energy and enthusiasm for an untenable position.
What an eminent Catholic Indianist once said about an
older work of Dahlmann is true also in this case:19 "Unin
tentional self-deception indeed seems in our author to go
hand in hand with an unmistakable purpose and to play
him an evil trick."
The historicity of the kernel of the Thomas legend lies
particularly close to Dahlmann's heart for the following
reason. Some years previously20 he tried to prove that the
Mah?y?na school of Buddhism which arose in the extreme
northwestern part of India at the beginning of our era
owes its most valuable ideas to Christian influences and
that it is only as a result of this enrichment that northern
Buddhism has attained its enormous expansion. But this
thesis is absolutely untenable.
When we see what Dahlmann's purpose is we can
understand how much it meant to him to furnish a proof
18 Winternitz in Deutsche Lit. Ztg., 1913, col. 1755.
"Edmund Hardy in Lit. Zentralbl, 1898, col. 1194.
" In his Indische Fahrten, Freiburg i. Br., 1908, 2 vols. Chapters 25-27.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 9
that Christianity had penetrated into the Indian border
land by the middle of the first century. For this it was
positively necessary that the apostolate of Thomas in that
locality be historical. To the reasons which his prede
cessors had brought forward for this, Dahlmann added
a new one in his Indische Fahrten, namely the combination
of apostleship and artistic handiwork in the person of
Thomas. Dahlmann believed that he could explain the
alleged Christian influence in the art of Gandh?ra by the
activity of the apostle Thomas in the Indian borderlands.
In his new work Dahlmann takes a somewhat different
standpoint. He grants21 that the general similarities which
exist between early Christian art and the art of Gandh?ra
can be explained by the fact that the artists of both groups
have drawn from one and the same source, namely from
the classical art of the Roman empire ; and further he says
(p. 100) : "That the Buddha-type of Gandh?ra should have
arisen in connection with the Christ-type, as Fergusson
and Smith are inclined to assume, is not merely improbable
but absolutely impossible." But he lays the greatest weight
upon the fact, "that the Parthian-Indian field of labor
ascribed to the apostle in the legend is connected by special
commercial and artistic relations with the Roman province
(Syria) from which Christianity proceeded" (p. 108).
I would like to answer the argument for the legendary
artistic occupation of the apostle by the pertinent obser
vation of O. Wecker,22 that in the legend of St. Thomas
the Christian apostle is not brought into relation with the
kind of artistic activity which most clearly betrays con
nection between Gandh?ra and the west, that is to say with
sculpture, but with the work of an architect and carpenter
a Thomas-Legende, pp. 96f.
* T?binger Theol. Quartal-Schrift, XCII, p. 561. Wecker refutes Dahl
mann^ demonstration in a happy manner but does not come out against
belief in the historical character of the Thomas legend with as great decision
as might be desired. For him the possibility still exists that Thomas may
really have been in India. Ibid., pp. 559-560.

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10 THE MONIST.

which may probably be accounted for by the imagery of the

construction of church or temple current in Christian modes
of speech.
On the other hand Winternitz, who in other particulars
takes throughout the standpoint which I represent, as
serts23 that in the Syrian text of the Acts of St. Thomas
the apostle says to the merchant Habb?n who brings him
from Jerusalem : "In wood I have learned to make plows
and yokes and ox-goads and rudders for boats and masts
for ships; and in stone, gravestones and monuments and
palaces for kings." Winternitz thinks that we can regard
the gravestones and monuments as well as the decorations
of the palaces as referring certainly to the Gandh?ra sculp
tures. I would like to contradict this ; for according to the
legend Thomas is brought merely for the purpose of build
ing a palace for King Gondophares, and in the Greek
version of the Acts of St. Thomas in the corresponding
passage he only declares that he understands how to make
"(tomb-) pillars and temples and royal palaces out of
stone." Probably this is the way the Syrian text also is
to be understood. But what Winternitz goes on to say
is very true: "Though the dependence of the Gandh?ra
art upon the west is certainly historical, yet it is not exactly
probable that Grecian artists would have been sought in
the streets of Jerusalem."
Moreover, it should be pointed out that according to
the legend the apostle Thomas did not build at all in the
realm of Gondophares and that he is said to have come
to this kingdom not by the land route through Syria but
by the ocean. Accordingly in Dahlmann's sense the artis
tic activity of the apostle and the artistic relations between
the Parthian-Indian realm and Syria have nothing to do
with the case in hand, and it is a simple fallacy when he
says on pages 109-110: "The historical elements which
* Deutsche Lit. Ztg., 1913, col. 1752.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA.

are woven into the legend may be referred to two funda

mental data : to the association of the apostle's name with
the name of a Parthian-Indian king and to the latter's rela
tions with western art. From this double connection the con
clusion may be drawn that the kernel of the tradition, i. e.,
the knowledge of a missionary journey which brought the
apostle Thomas into contact with a Parthian-Indian king
dom, can not be invented but must rest upon a historical
foundation."
The way in which Dahlmann makes the second part of
the legend of St. Thomas, dealing with the martyrdom and
burial of the apostle in the realm of King Mazdai, serve
his purpose is characteristic. He adopts Sylvain L?vi's
very doubtful identification of King Mazdai with the Indo
Scythian king V?sudeva (epigraphically A E ) in
which Sylvain L?vi thinks he has found a contemporary of
Gondophares. But V?sudeva lived considerably later than
Gondophares, in all probability not until the end of the
second or beginning of the third century, so that Dahl
mann is obliged to explain the apostle's martyrdom in the
realm of King Mazdai as an invention of poetic fancy.
Nevertheless Dahlmann finds a historical kernal even in
this part of the Thomas legend. To him Mazdai is an
actual king who governed the realm, which is said to have
formed the field of the apostle's activity, at the time when
the latter's relics were alleged to have been brought from
India to Syria. "The anachronism which transforms a
prince who lived one hundred and fifty years later into a
contemporary of the apostle was caused by the report that
the relics came from the realm of King Mazdai" (p. 147).
A very arbitrary assumption! That Dahlmann believes
also in the tradition of the transference of the bones of
St. Thomas to Edessa was to be expected from the whole
drift of his expositions.
The other names of the second part of the Acts of St.

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 12 THE MONIST.

Thomas Dahlmann knows also how to interpret historically

and geographically. General Siforus is the Parthian satrap
S?tapharna ; the place of martyrdom Calamina is Kaly?na
in the vicinity of Bombay; the mountain Gazus where St.
Thomas met his death after his passion denotes the Ghats
mountains (pp. 153, 156-157). Dahlmann is a master at
imaginary combinations. Even in the tradition of the
Thomas Christians in southern India, which he regards as
unauthentic, he finds valuable evidence for the historical
character of the traditions of northern India, as is shown
in the last chapter of his book.
In reality the whole Thomas legend is as much invented
as, in Dahlmann's opinion, is the apostle's martyrdom in
the kingdom of Mazdai. This became clear in 1864 by the
critique to which Alfred von Gutschmid subjected the
Thomas legend in his famous essay, "Die K?nigsnamen in
den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten."24 Gutschmid justly
emphasizes the great intrinsic improbability that Christian
ity should have spread so early into so remote a region
before it had obtained a firm footing anywhere in western
Iran ; for the natural way from Syria to India would have
been by land. Gutschmid furnishes a further proof, which
for the most part still holds to-day, that the first part of
the Thorns legend is a transformation of a Buddhist mis
sionary tale.25 White India or Arachosia (hence the spe
cial kingdom of Gondophares) was converted to Buddhism
in exactly the period in which the Thomas legend is set.
Accordingly we have here a very similar case to that of
the legend of St. Bartholomew which was originally a
story of Jewish conversion with the scene laid in Armenia
or Media but later was given a Christian setting and sig
nificance and transferred to India.26 Ernst Kuhn in a per
sonal letter plausibly identifies the Indian king Polymius in
"Kleine Schriften, edited by Franz R?hl, II, pp. 332t
"Rejected by Winternitz, Deutsche Lit Ztg., 1913, col. 1754.
"Wecker, Tub. Theol. Quart-Schr., XCII, p. 556.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 13
the Passio Bartholomaei with Pulum?yi. I assume that
of the three Andhra kings of this name, Pulum?yi I
(26-58) and not Pulum?yi II (138-170) or Pulum?yi III
(229-236) is meant.27 We would then have in the legend
of Bartholomew exactly the same case as in the Thomas
legend, namely that a known Indian king from the middle
of the first century has been interwoven into the apoc
ryphal story of the apostle.
Ernst Kuhn has likewise most kindly called my atten
tion to the fact that the palace which Thomas claimed he
had erected in heaven for King Gondophares corresponds
to the Buddhist Vim?nas from which the Vim?navatthu re
ceived its name. This work is a description of the celestial
abodes and their delights with a list of the good works for
which the inhabitants of these heavenly worlds will be
rewarded by the enjoyment of such bliss.28
The recasting of the Buddhist original into the Thomas
legend hardly took place before the beginning of the third
century. Gutschmid has expressed the very probable view
that the Christians became acquainted with the supposed
story of Buddhist conversion through the Syrian Gnostic
Bardesanes who was well informed on Buddhist and Indian
conditions in general.
At any rate there were no Christians within Indian
boundaries before the third century. The wider extension
of Christianity in general, of course, began in the middle
of the second. The earliest account of the presence of

27 The periods of these reigns are given according to the approximate cal
culation of Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India, 2d ed., in the
chronological table following page 202.
"This combination is opposed by Winternitz (op. cit., col. 1754) on what
in my opinion is an insufficient ground. Perhaps Winternitz will abandon
his opposition when he learns of Kuhn's further observation that the descrip
tion of the visit to hell of Gad, the brother of Gondophares,?at least in
the Syrian poem of Jacob of Sarug?exactly resembles the story of Revat? in
the Vim?navatthu (Chap. 52). Cf. S. R. Schr?ter, "Gedicht des Jacob von Sarug
?ber den Palast, den der Apostel Thomas in Indien baute," ZDMG, XXV, pp.
360f; and L. Scherman, Materialien zur Geschichte der indischen Visions
litteratur, pp. 56f.

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 14 THE MONIST.

Christians in Parthia and northwestern India in Origen?

hence in the first half of the third century?is an indirect
one.29 The statement of Bardesanes, who speaks of the
existence of Christian communities in Parthia, Media, Per
sia and among the Bactrians and Geles, would lead us30 to a
somewhat earlier period, that is to say, to the beginning of
the third century. But now since later research has shown
that the Syrian original 'On Fate" in which this statement
originates was not written by Bardesanes himself but by
one of his disciples, the note is probably later than that of
Origen. If this disciple of Bardesanes had known of any
Christians within Indian boundaries he certainly would not
have kept silent about them in his enumeration. It there
fore still remains doubtful whether the first entrance of
Christianity into the land of the Indus took place as early
as the first half of the third century.
Historically we know absolutely nothing about St.
Thomas except that he was one of the twelve apostles,
and these Wellhausen regards as a council instituted after
the death of Jesus. I may here introduce a few sentences
containing information that seems to me serviceable from
a letter that Th. N?ldeke wrote me on this question Jan
uary 6, 1910: "The introduction of Thomas in the Gospel
of John is as arbitrary as a number of similar references
to persons and places in the Fourth Gospel. The statement
that the body of Thomas was removed to Edessa (the ear
lier sources leave out the 'from India') is probably only an
adjustment of two traditions, one saying that he was buried
in Edessa where his tomb is shown, and the other in the
legend [of his burial in India]. Neither of course is his
torical."
All investigators who are inclined to regard as histor

* Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei

Jahrhunderten, 2d ed., II, p. 126.
* In Eusebius, Praep. Evangel., VI, 10.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 15
ical31 the basis of the Thomas legend, i. e., his apostolate
in Indo-Iranian countries, are in my judgment driven to
it by an apologetic impulse though perhaps unconsciously.
They do not, however, observe at the same time how greatly
they would increase the "Buddhist peril" for the New
Testament if they were right. For if there had been Chris
tians in one of the many Buddhist countries as early as the
middle of the first century, hence before the Gospels were
written, then the natural connection of these Christians
with Syria and Palestine would cause the contested trans
mission of Buddhist elements into the Gospel?especially
into the two that bear the names of Luke and John?to
appear in a much clearer light than is the case without the
historical basis of the Thomas legend.
* * *

The absolute unreliability of

be established before we can p
to the questions as to how ear
tians had settled along the
where they had come from. U
question as to how the nam
inated can not be answered
sibilities present themselves
elers of the early Middle Age
tians whom they found in so
St. Thomas" on the basis of
and the native Christians m
this designation?this is Bu
u G. Faber has recently joined their
und neutestamentliche Erz?hlungen, p
the apocryphal Acts of St Thomas "
extremely keen and comprehensive tre
opinion no longer be questioned." This
on the subject (p. 26-27) Faber would
read my review of Dahlmann's book in
360f, or Winternitz's later criticism in
At any rate Faber will not find any of
him.
-IA, III, p. 309.

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 6 THE MONIST.

name may have originated, according to a probability fre

quently expressed, by a confusion of St. Thomas with
Thomas of Cana (also called Thomas Kama or some simi
lar form, and Mar Thomas) under whose leadership a
large number of Christians, alleged to be from Bagdad,
Nineveh and Jerusalem, immigrated to Malabar in the
year 745 and strengthened the Christian communities al
ready there upon whom this reinforcement must have made
a strong impression. This Thomas founded for the new
Christian immigrants the city of Mah?devapattana in the
neighborhood of Cranganore, erected many churches in
that locality, established seminaries for the education of
the clergy and acquired important privileges for the Thomas
Christians from the rulers of the country.33
There are still other possibilities of confusion, for in
those days there was a large number of prominent men
by the name of Thomas.34
W. W. Hunter35 represents a view which differs from
both of the possibilities mentioned. He proceeds from the
idea that the Persian church had appropriated the name
of "Thomas Christians" in the seventh century and that
in time this designation spread to all branches of that
church, hence also to Malabar; that the old legend of the

w G. M. Rae, The Syrian Church in India, pp. 162-163 ; Lassen, Indische

Altertumskunde, 2d. ed., II, p. 1121; Karl Heck, Hat der heilige Apostel
Thomas in Indien das Evangelium gepredigt? pp. 21-22. The accounts of
this "Thomas Cananaeus" are very contradictory ; his home is assigned both to
Jerusalem and to Armenia. At any rate he was an influential and very well
to-do merchant who was bishop of the Christians of southern India at the time
of his death. K. Kessler in Herzog's Realencyklop?die, 3d ed., XIII, p. 735, placed
him in the beginning of the ninth century ; Germann {Die Kirche der Thomas
christen, p. 92), and others (see V. A. Smith, The Early History of India,
2d ed., p. 222, note 1), even as early as the year 345. The coincidence in the
two last figures of the dates 745 and 345 makes it probable that in the date
345 we may have an old error of the pen or print for 745, which has been
handed on. Ad. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, I, 1883, pp. 283f.,
has accepted Germann's statements about the confused traditions with regard
to this man without taking exception to the double number 345/745. Lassen
{op. cit.) suggests the year 435. Here again we have the three figures of the
year 345 in another arrangement.
M Germann, pp. 99-201.
u The Indian Empire, 3d ed., p. 287.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 17
Manichaean Thomas of the third century, and the later
activity of the above-mentioned Thomas of Cana, the re
viver of the church of Malabar, had by the eighth century
increased the respect for that name among the Christians
of southern India. Thus far his assumptions seem to con
sist of conjectures without foundation. But afterwards
his expositions amount to the old and very probable con
fusion theory when he adds the remark that perhaps in
their comparative isolation and ignorance the Christians
of southern India had mixed up the three names and had
concentrated the legends of the three Thomases upon the
person of the apostle, and that before the expiration of the
fourteenth century this process had ended in the con
viction of those Christians that their St. Thomas and
Christ were one and the same person. The last remark of
Hunter arises from an erroneous conception ; for Thomas,
the "twin brother of the Lord/' has elsewhere also often
been confused with Christ, especially by the Syrian Chris
tians. Hence the identification is not the work of the iso
lated Thomas Christians in Malabar, but originates in the
home of Nestorianism.
How long the Thomas Christians have been in southern
India is not easy to determine. In his treatment of the
subject?unfortunately very short?Harnack36 is right in
saying: "That the 'Thomas Christians' who were again
discovered in India in the sixteenth century37 extend back
M Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, 2d ed., II, pp. 126-127. H.
Achelis, Das Christentum in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (2 vols., Leipsic,
1912) does not touch at all upon the question of the extension of Christianity
into India.
"Harnack has overlooked the fact that Marco Polo had already redis
covered them at the end of the thirteenth century, and that several other wit
nesses from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries follow him. A. Burnell says
(IA, III, p. 311, note) : "The most important historical notices of Nestorians
and Syrians in India which I can find are: (1) by Friar Odoricus, who about
the beginning of the fourteenth century was in southern India and mentions
fifteen houses of Nestorians at St. Thomas's shrine ; (2) by Nicolo Conti who
traveled in India in the fifteenth century. Speaking of Malepur (St. Thome)
he says: 'Here the body of St. Thomas lies honorably buried in a very large
and beautiful church; it is worshiped by heretics who are called Nestorians
and inhabit this city to the number of a thousand. These Nestorians are

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 8 THE MONIST.

to the third century can not be proved." In France, Eng

land and America, there is a different opinion. In these
countries scholars seem inspired with the desire to prove the
authenticity of apocryphal legends, and to attribute a greater
antiquity to the expansion of Christianity than strict his
torical critique can concede. We may here recall the judg
ment of those scholars on the Thomas legend. Hopkins38
states without any qualification, "that Pantaenus was ex
pressly sent to teach the Brahmans in India, and found a
Christian church already established there in 190 A. D."
This belief is shared by W. W. Hunter39 and J. Kennedy40
whereas in Germany it is the universal and well-justified
assumption that southern Arabia is to be understood by
the India to which Pantaenus (according to Eusebius, Hist,
eccl., V, 10) went as missionary from Alexandria.41 All
of southern Asia was called India in those days ; and when
Eusebius reports that Pantaenus had already found a
Christian community in India possessing the Gospel of
Matthew in the Hebrew language, we can, in fact, only
think of a less remote country, that is, of southern Arabia,
where the Jews were living in great numbers at the time.
Directly before the above mentioned note on Pantaenus
Hopkins says without mentioning his source : "We know
also that a great colony of Jews emigrated from Palestine
?ten thousand in all?and settled on the Malabar coast
in A. D. 68." Now this remark is by no means con
sistent with the essay, "Christ in India"; for the Jews
would certainly not have made the extension of Christian
scattered over all India/ (India in the Ffteenth Century published by the
Hakluyt Society, p. 7.)" The traveler Giovanni de* Mangnolli in the four
teenth century also told about the place and the Thomas legend that clung
to it. Colonel Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither (Hakluyt Society, 1866),
II, p. 375 ; Rae, The Syrian Church in India, pp. 124-125 ; Encyclop dia Britan
nica, s. v. "Marignolh."
M India Old and New in the essay "Christ in India," p. 141.
" The Indian Empire, 3d ed., p. 285.
"JRAS, 1907, po. 479, 955-956.
?Harnack, op. cit., p. 126; G. Kr?ger in Herzog's Realencyklop'ddie, 3d
ed., XIV, p. 627, s. v. "Pantaenus"; Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegen

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 19
ity into India any business of theirs. But the incredibility
of the statement in itself is obvious and is increased by the
consideration that even in our own time, according to the
census of 1911, there are only 18,000 Jews in all India.
My inquiries for the source of the fantastic information of
Hopkins have been without success. I have only found
the following note by W. W. Hunter:42 "Whether these
Jews emigrated to India at the time of the dispersion, or
at a later period, local tradition assigns to their settlements
an origin anterior to the second century of our era." Th.
N?ldeke wrote me January 20, 1910, on the subject as fol
lows: "Whence Hopkins gets his information about the
10,000 Jewish emigrants to India in 68 A. D. I can not
imagine. At any rate it is nonsense (so he says 'weknow P).
Your assumption that southern Arabia, [or rather, Abys
sinia (A a in the broader sense) ] is here called India
is certainly correct, but even then the account is unhistor
ical. Of course the Jews have carried on propaganda in both
places, especially in Abyssinia, with great success ; but we
have no historical account of the origin of these under
takings nor even about Jews, or Arabs converted to Juda
ism, in northern Arabia."
In fact the oldest evidence for the existence of Chris
tian communities on the western coast of southern India
is found in the account of Kosmas Indikopleustes, which is
based upon observations during the years 525-530. Kos
mas, an Egyptian merchant who in his younger years had
made several business journeys to India and had later
become a monk, is the author of a startling work on "Chris
tian Topography," in which with great garrulity he op
poses scientific geography and especially the great geog

wart, edited by Schiele and Zscharnack, III, p. 468. Rae, The Syrian Church
in India, pp. 67f, regards the India of Alexander the Great, i. e., the valley
of the In dus, as the scene of the operations of Pantaenus. Edmunds agrees
with him, Buddhist and Christian Gospels, 4th ed., I, pp. 145-146.
* The Indian Empire, 3d ed., p. 284.

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20 THE MONIST.

rapher Ptolemy. Kosmas denies that the earth

and declares that it is an elongated disk surrou
high walls upon which the firmament rests like
The change from day to night is caused by the sun
around a monstrous mountain in the extreme nor
monkish folly to be sure does not arouse any predi
in favor of Kosmas's account of his journeys, and
worthiness is not exactly increased by the fact th
the tracks in the Red Sea made by the wheels of P
chariot when pursuing the children of Israel. B
way in which Kosmas in the midst of his stupid de
of the earth tells what he had seen previously a
chant in India, gives the impression of actual obse
W. Vincent43 finds no echo to his statement tha
was never in India. It is disproved by reference
correct Indian names and words which Kosmas int
( a , "Moshustier" in Book XI is, by the w
earliest record of the Sanskrit kast?r?). Eviden
west coasts of India and Ceylon were well know
mas. From what he tells us about these localities
lowing is of interest to us:44 "On the island Tap
(Ceylon). .. .there is also a Christian church an
and believers,. .. .likewise also in a (= Skt.
'Malabar') where pepper grows ; and in the city wh
call a a a there is also a bishop who is appoin
Persia." And in the section "On the island
bane" in Book XI Kosmas completes the above a
with the words :4S "This island also possesses a chu
the Persian Christians living there, and a presb
pointed in Persia and a deacon, and the whole eccle
service; but the natives and the king belong to
people and have many shrines on this island." W
"The Voyage of ear chus (1797) in the French Version of Billec
363n, 544a
"Kosmas, ed. Winstedt, III, p. 119.
a Page 322.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 21

last words Kosmas indicates that the natives in Ceylon

profess another religion, namely, Buddhism.
By "Male where pepper grows," we are without any
doubt, according to Burnell, to understand the seaport Tra
vancore. As far as the city Kalliana (Sanskrit Kaly?na)
is concerned, we may hesitate between two ports of this
name on the western coast. One of these, thirty-thre
miles northeast of Bombay, the Kaly?n of to-day on th
Ulhas river, is known as an ancient provincial capital; the
other lies about thirty-two miles north of Mangalore. This
second place, which to-day is an unimportant village, Bur
nell regards as the city referred to by Kosmas ; for, as he
says, Kosmas names as the chief articles of export from Ka
liana a (by which only steel could be understood) and
cotton cloth; and that steel seems to have been produce
only in the southern part of the Dekkan, in Maisur and
Salem.46 This argument is easily refuted, for a does
not mean steel or hardened iron. It means of course what
it has always meant except when it has denoted bronze,
namely copper, for which the Greek language has no other
term. All probability then is in favor of the idea that th
account of Kosmas refers to the famous old city, Kaly?na
(or Kaly?n?), in the vicinity of Bombay.
Kosmas's particulars about the bishop of Kalliana or
dained in Persia and about the exclusively Persian Chri
tian community in Ceylon leave no doubt as to the descent
of the Christian in Southern India and the error of their
own tradition. When Burnell says : "All the trustworthy
facts up to the tenth century.... go to show that the ear
liest Christian settlements in India were Persian,"47 h
is certainly as much in the right as he is mistaken in his
assumption that the earliest colonists in southern Indi
were Manichaean immigrants. This latter asumption, an
?Burneil, A, III, p. 310.
" Op. cit., p. 311. Cf. also J. Kennedy, JRAS, 1907, p. 956; O. Wecker,
Tub. Theol. Quart. Sehr., XCII, 1910, p. 541.

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 22 THE MONIST.

the basis upon which it rests, was rejected by Collins48

and since then has not found any supporters.
The Persian descent of the Christians in southern India
is likewise attested by the Pahlavi inscriptions found in
that locality which have been discussed by Burnell in the
essay already frequently cited.49 The earliest of these in
scriptions do not date back farther than the seventh or
eighth century.50
When we inquire into the occasion that brought the
earliest colonies of Persian Christians to southern India,
next to the commercial interests the Persian persecutions
of the Christians in the years 343 and 414 suggest them
selves. Fugitives might have been driven by these perse
cutions to India, just as at a later time the P?rs?s who were
oppressed by Islam found a new home in this tolerant land
which first learned religious intolerance from its Moham
medan conquerors. Since there was no authentic witness
for the presence of Christians along the southwestern coast
of India before Kosmas, as we have seen, we may assume
that the first Christian colonies in Malabar were founded
by persecuted Persian Christians in the middle of the
fourth century.
J. Kennedy has repeatedly asserted51 that even at this
time there was a monastery of Persian monks in the in
terior of Ceylon. Now no one who is acquainted with the
fact that the earliest conventual communities were estab
lished then for the first time in Egypt and Syria, the very
cradle of Christian monasticism, will consider it possible
that at that early date the Christian custom of founding
monasteries could have penetrated as far as remote Ceylon.
At first I thought that Kennedy had confused a Buddhist
a A, IV, pp. 153f.
" A, III, pp. 31 If.
" Hardly to the fifth. Cf. the bibliography in Wecker, op. cit.
a JRAS, 1907, pp. 480, 957, note 3, following Labourt, Le Christianisme
dans I Emptre Perse, p. 306. (In Kennedy the reference is wrongly given as
p. 606.)

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 23
with a Christian monastery, but then I considered it neces
sary nevertheless to investigate his source and found to
my surprise that it consisted merely of this legendary
note in Labourt : "S'il faut en croire Thagiographe Z?do?,
pr?tre et solitaire, chef du monast?re de Saint-Thomas
dans le pays de lTnde, dont le si?ge est fix? sous les pays de
Qatray?, ? Ceylan, l'?le noire...." Qatray?, as my col
league Seybold informs me, is one name for eastern Arabia.
As a proof of the early entrance of Christianity into
India Grierson cites52 that "Chrysostom (fourth century)
tells us of Christian treatises translated into Indian lan
guages." Here he doubtless means the often quoted pas
sage in Johannes Chrysostomus, Horn, on John ii. 2:53
a a a a A a a a a
A e a a e a e e a e a?a e
a a a a a a e a a e a a -
?a ?a e .
But this witness, especially in consideration of
biguity between and a existing at that ti
absolutely worthless. Even the added phr
e ea e shows what we must think of the conglom
of national names in this pathetic homiletic passag
there is no other trace of a translation of the New
ment or of any other Christian document into Ind
guages from so early a time nor even from any of
lowing centuries up to the beginning of modern ti
must not see a historiad witness in the words of
tum, but merely a thoughtless rhetorical expressio
The date when the Christians in southern India
subordinate to the Nestorians, can be determin
practical certainty. Burners view55 that this did no
w JRAS, 1907, p.. 498. Edmunds, in Buddhist and Christian Gos
ed., I, p. 146, also regards this evidence as authentic.
M Migne edition, Patrol, LIX, 32.
"Tide, Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1877, p. 71, in Carl Clemen, Re
geschichtliche Erkl?rung des Neuen Testaments, p. 28, note.
WIA, III, p. 311.

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 24 THE MONIST.

before the eleventh or twelfth century because we find first

mention of Syrians living in India in travelers' reports in
the Middle Ages requires no refutation. Nor is W. Koch's56
statement correct, that the Nestorians became connected
with the Thomas Christians in India proper in the seventh
century, because we have evidence of a connection between
the Thomas Christians in southern India and Persian Nes
torianism as early as the beginning of the sixth century.
Kosmas's statement that the bishop of Kalliana and the
presbyter at Ceylon had been appointed from Persia shows
the dependence of the parishes there on the Nestorian
patriarchate. In the beginning of the sixth century the
only ecclesiastical head in Persia was the Nestorian catholi
kos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, because in the second half of the
fifth century King P?r?z (Pheroses) declared in an edict
that Nestorianism was to be the only permitted form of
Christianity in his kingdom, which led to the cruel exter
mination of the Persian Christians adhering to the ortho
dox church,57 and because in the year 498 the bishop of
Seleucia formally renounced his allegiance to Antioch and
by so doing founded the dissenting church of Persian Nes
torians.
When M. Haug58 tried to place the date of the Nes
torian church in India back in the fifth century, he was
certainly under the influence of Catholic tradition, accord
ing to which Nestorianism spread about 486 to Malabar
from Babylon, i. e., probably from the district between the
Euphrates and Tigris.59 The authenticity of this tradition
is contradicted by the intrinsic improbability that Nestorian
influence could have expanded in a foreign country at a
time of severe internal conflict. We may assume that this
did not take place until the beginning of the sixth centurv.
"In the article "Nestorianismus" in Michael Buchberger's Kirchliches
Handlexikon, II, p. 1104.
" Rae, The Syrian Church in India, p. 107.
" In Germann, Die Kirche der Thomaschristen, p. 301.
Hunter, The Indian Empire, 3d ed., p. 279.

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 ST. THOMAS IN INDIA. 25
after the consolidation of the Persian dissenting church.
This is also the opinion of Rae60 who, to be sure, bases it
only on the Persians5 growing fondness for ocean travel
and for the increase of commerce.
The Christian parishes on the west coast of India at
that time combined with those scattered through Arabia
to form a diocese under the control of the metropolitan of
Persia. We must not, however, overestimate the spread
of Christianity on the coast of western India in those
days. When Kessler61 says that the entire western coast of
India must still have been Christian at the beginning of
the seventh century this is merely a conjecture. The words
"must have been" alone prove the weakness of the posi
tion. Nor is there evidence to show that in the preceding
sixth century the entire west coast of India had been Chris
tian.
Further expositions of Kessler in the same place teach
that the union of the Christian parishes in India with the
Nestorian patriarchate had become greatly relaxed by the
middle of the seventh century and after a temporary
strengthening broke off entirely in the ninth century. I
here quote the most important sentences: "Shortly after
Kosmas, about 570, the presbyter B?dh had to inspect the
churches of India as periodeutes;... .but Jesujahb of Adi
abene (Patr. 659-660) complains in his writings that
through the fault of Simeon, the metropolitan of Persia,
and that of his predecessor the churches of India had be
come quite orphaned.... The Thomas Christians' in India
were assigned a metropolitan for the first time under the
patriarch Timotheus (778-820)... .This union with the
Nestorian patriarchate seems to have been discontinued
soon afterwards."62
The Syrian Church in India, pp. 116, 118.
n In the article "Nestorianer" in Herzog's Realencyklop?die, 3d ed, XIII,
p. 728.
"Ibid., pp. 728, 73S.

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 26 THE MONIST.

The time when the Thomas Christians made themselves

ecclesiastically independent coincides with their political
independence, for in the eighth and ninth centuries the
Christians in Malabar obtained from the native princes
the right of self-government and such important privi
leges that for the time being they formed an independent
state with kings of their own.63 In their seclusion the
Thomas Christians did not in the least preserve their re
ligion uncorrupted, and in the fourteenth century they
even abandoned baptism. However, up to the time of their
persecution by the Jesuits they occupied a very respected
position in southern India on account of their high moral
tone.64
To-day the small communities of Thomas Christians in
southern India, together with the Nestorian parishes in
the Kurd mountains and on the Lake of Urmia comprise
the scanty remnant that is left of the Nestorian church
which once was so strong in central and upper Asia.65
The result of my discussions for our subsequent inquiry
I can summarize thus : The small Christian communities in
southern India known by the name of Thomas Christians
consisted first (in the fourth and beginning of the fifth
centuries) of Persian immigrants; these were joined later
by Jews and native Indian members of the Dravidian race.
Christian influence upon Indian religions could not
have been felt from these communities before the Neo
Brahmanism of the twelfth century; for previous to that
the centers of religious life lay in northern India. There
fore for this earlier time we can only consider the Christians
in the northwestern borderland as possible mediums of
Christian thought. There, as we have seen above, there
may possibly have been Christians in the first half of the
third century, but the evidence is not sufficient for us to
* Ibid., . 735 ; Rae, The Syrian Church in India, pp. 154f.
M Weber, Krishnajantnashtamt, p. 322.
* Kessler, op. cit., p. 733.

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 st. thomas in india. 27
make this assertion definitely. There are no Nestorian
Christians farther in the interior of northern India before
the seventh century.
We may expect a priori to find Christian influences in
Buddhist Sanskrit literature before we do in the Brahman
because the Indian borderland was entirely Buddhistic in
the first centuries of our era, and moreover foreign ele
ments of a homogeneous character would be able to enter
more easily into cosmopolitan Buddhism than into national
istic Brahmanism. It will be well to keep this fact before
our eyes, especially in judging early Krishnaism.
Richard Garbe.
T?bingen, Germany.

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