National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

I16

VOL. II. BK. III.

MARCO POLO.

In Guzerat, Chau Ju-kwa, p. 92, mentions : Four thousand

Buddhist temple buildings, in which live over twenty thousand

dancing-girls who sing twice daily while offering food to the

Buddha (i.e., the idols) and while offering flowers."

IS

XVIII., p. 356.

TRADITIONS OF ST. THOMAS.

" The traditional site of the Apostle's Tomb, now adjacent

to the sea-shore, has recently come to be enclosed in the crypt

of the new Cathedral of San Thomé." (A. E. MEDLYCOTT,

India and the Apostle Thomas. An inquiry. With a critical

analysis of the Acta. Thomæ. London, David Nutt, 1905, 8vo.)

In the beginning of the sixteenth century Barbosa found the

church of St. Thomas half in ruins and grown round with jungle.

A Mahomedan fakir kept it and maintained a lamp. Yet in

1504, which is several years earlier than Barbosa's voyage, the

Syrian Bishop Jaballaha, who had been sent by the Patriarch to

take charge of the Indian Christians, reported that the House of

St. Thomas had begun to be inhabited by some Christians, who

were engaged in restoring it.

Mr. W. R. Philipps has a valuable paper on The Connection

of St. Thomas the Apostle with India in the Indian Antiquary,

XXXII., 1903, pp. I-15, 145-160 ; he has come to the following

conclusions : (I) There is good early evidence that St. Thomas

was the apostle of the Parthian empire ; and also evidence that

he was the apostle of ` India ' in some limited sense, probably of

an India ' which included the Indus Valley, but nothing to the

east or south of it. (2) According to the Acts, the scene of the

martyrdom of St. Thomas was in the territory of a king named,

according to the Syriac version, Mazdai, to which he had pro-

ceeded after a visit to the city of a king named, according to the

same version, Gūdnaphar or Gündaphar. (3) There is no

evidence at all that the place where St. Thomas was martyred

was in Southern India ; and all the indications point to another

direction. (4) We have no indication whatever, earlier than that

given by Marco Polo, who died 1324, that there ever was even

a tradition that St. Thomas was buried in Southern India."

In a recent and learned work (Die Thomas Legende, 1912,

8vo.) Father J. Dahlmann has tried to prove that the story of

the travels of St. Thomas in India has an historical basis. If

there is sonie possibility of admitting a voyage of the Apostle to

N.W. India (and the flourishing state of Buddhism in this