“Their Keralolpattis tell how ‘Thoman, an opponent of all vedas’
came to the Malabar coast and converted ‘many prominent people in
the land.’ The Nagargarandhravaryola of the family Kalathu Mana
notes: ‘Kali year 3153 (AD 52) the foreigner Thomas Sanyasi came
to our village, preached there causing pollution. We therefore came
away from that village.’ This was in Palayur, where a Christian
church stands to this day on the ruins of a Hindu temple. The
tradition of the Jews who came to Cranganore in 68 is that a
Christian community already existed there when they arrived.”³
Nevertheless, the greatest proof of St. Thomas’ successful mission in India
is the Church that currently exists to this day, a Church with sixty
generations of Christians. St. Pantaenus, founder of the Catechetical School
in Alexandria, discovered Christians in India knowing of the Gospel of St.
Matthew before 200 AD.
4
A bishop “of India and Persia” was present at the
Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Cosmos Indicopleustes in his Topographia
writes of Indian Christian communities with their own bishop c. 535 AD.
When the Portuguese arrived in 1498 they found that the Indian Christians
called themselves “the Nazrani” (or, the Nazarenes), the first designation
for believers in Christ.
After seventeen years, St. Thomas decided to travel to the other side of the
Indian peninsula and preach on the Coromandel coast. He came eventually
to Mylapore, near the city of Madras. St. Thomas again challenged the
supremacy of Kali, to the hatred of the local Brahmin. One day in 72 AD,
while praying in a cave on Little Mount hill, St. Thomas was attacked by
some Brahmin, one of them piercing the Apostle through the heart with a
lance. He was buried in Mylapore, where Indian Christians have ever since
venerated his tomb.
5
Forty-two years earlier, St. Thomas had said, “Let us also go, that we may
die like him” (St. John 11, 16). By traveling to India, St. Thomas had
certainly gone a long way for his Master, and by a lance through the heart,
died like Him.
3
Warren H. Carroll, The Founding of Christendom, Ibid., p. 418.
4
Eusebius, The History of the Church, 5, 10.
5
St. Gregory of Tours in the sixth century was acquainted with a pilgrim to St.
Thomas’ tomb; and recent dating has established that the bricks used to construct
the original tomb were of first century manufacture.
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