The Journey of St Thomas: Did He Really Reach India?

St Thomas Basilica, Mylapur, Chennai, which is believed to be the original burial place of St Thomas.

Although numerous Christian sects in India hold the belief that St. Thomas traveled to India and converted their ancestors to Christianity, this narrative is considered apocryphal. Research involving facts, fiction, and historical documents has not yielded definitive proof of such a journey by St. Thomas. Nonetheless, the absence of evidence has not deterred the Christians of South India from believing that he arrived on their shores and introduced them to the new faith.

Travel to India was Possible Even before the Time of St

Thomas

Imagine the legendary tower of Babel, in ancient Iraq, standing tall above all other man-made structures, as depicted in a parable in the Book of Genesis. A story involving this tower could be one of the earliest tales about ancient long-distance travel that humans undertook, if we follow Biblical or Jewish mythology. The account goes like this: Before the Babel tower was built, the humans were a single race and spoke one language; and the place where the tower stood was called Shinar. The Babel tower touched the sky and angered Yahweh with its majesty and human arrogance. So, Yahweh confounded human speech resulting in many races and many languages. The unity of humanity was thus destroyed and the human race scattered abroad travelling to many places.

It is fascinating to think that mythologically, this could be the first instance of long-distance travel. However, this story has no historical veracity. The remains supposedly of the Babel tower have been discovered in Iraq recently but it is another story for another time.

In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar II, the great Babylonian king, began to capture Jews and take them away from the kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem. This story is part history, part folklore. Those Jews who were left behind are thought to have scattered across the East, including places like Persia, India, Tibet, and China; another mass migration that changed the face of the world. Here, we need to look into what Strabo wrote; Strabo, the great and the most fascinating of the known first historians of the world, the astute geographer and passionate traveller. Having lived in the rarest of rare centuries of human history- his lifetime began in the first century BCE and ended in the first century CE- Strabo wrote extensively documenting his period. His writings reveal that the Jews scattered around in all cities of the world after the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Did some of them travel to India? The official history records that the Jews arrived in south India in 72 AD. Yet, there is every possibility that some Jews reached India even before that, travelling by land, by the famous silk route. The people of the Levant could have had some communication with the land and people that they left behind, through travellers, messengers, and traders who kept moving to and fro.

As early as around 750 BCE, Homer, the Greek author, had written about India. Herodotus (484 BCE to 424 BCE), the father of modern history writing, also wrote about the conquests of Darius I in different parts of India. Not to mention Alexander the Great who conquered the Gandhara kingdom of India in 326 BCE. Megasthenes wrote ‘The Indica’ in about 310 BCE detailing the geography and customs that existed in India and this book became the first ethnographic study of India ever. Given these facts, it is no surprise that immediately after the death of Jesus Christ, his disciples and followers sought to travel to India to spread the message of Christianity.

St Thomas, the Father of Indian Christianity?

Many Christians in India believe that the Apostle Thomas came to India. Yet, there are no historical records available to prove that the journey of St Thomas to India really happened. The story that passed on through generations of Indian Christians is this- St Thomas came to Muziris, the ancient port city in South India, around 52 AD. He converted hundreds of natives to Christianity. The local chieftains and the community of the south as a whole, welcomed the new religion.

One has to remember here that 52 AD is a time in history when Christianity was a nascent religion. Only one or two decades behind, was the lifetime of Jesus Christ. At such a young stage of this new religion, why would St Thomas, the pious disciple of Jesus, decide to travel to the far-off and unknown land that is India instead of working to make Christianity take root in Central Asia and Europe? Was he murdered in Mylapore of south India in 72 AD as is believed in India? If so, why is there no conclusive evidence to prove this? All these questions continue to intrigue believers and historians equally.

The Life Journey of St Thomas

One among the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, St Thomas was also known as Judas Thomas. He is well-known as the disciple of Jesus who first did not believe that Christ had resurrected and was convinced only when Christ made him touch his wounds. Historically, there is very little known about him. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (239 AD-360 AD), the father of church history who wrote the history of Christianity from Christ to Constantine, (history of the first three centuries after Christ) wrote about St Thomas,

“...the holy apostles of our Saviour were scattered across the whole world. Thomas, according to tradition, was allotted Parthia, Andrew Scythia, and John Asia, where he stayed until his death at Ephesus.” (The Church History, 2007, p.80).

Between the desert of Khorasan and the Great Salt Desert of Iran lies a fertile patch of land, 300 miles long and about 170 miles in width, and Parthia was a small country situated in this region. Before we talk more about Parthia, let us go back to St Thomas and explore a bit more how his name and possibly destiny got intertwined with India.

Evidence About the Journey of St Thomas to India: Ephrem Syrus (306 CE - 373 CE)

The writings of Ephrem Syrus are one of the oldest texts that indicate that St Thomas travelled to India. It says:-

“...our Lord chose Himself twelve Apostles, and divided to them the four quarters of the world, and set them as stewards of His household, and ministers of His divine mysteries, and charged them to give to the Israel of God living and incorruptible Nourishment, and to bring heavenly Food unto the house of the King of peace. But the boundary of their domain doth Scripture therefore declare, because the Apostles divided the four quarters of the world, and each one of them took a notable place to teach, Simon Rome, John Ephesus, Matthew Palestine, Thomas India, and so forth” (Syrus, Morris and Pusey, 1847, p.343)”.

The above was an extract from Ephrem’s hymns. These lines suggest that St Thomas was entrusted with spreading Christianity in India.

Nathanael J Andrade, a noted historian, in his 2018 book about the journey of Christianity to India, cites evidence about a group of merchants from Palmyra, an ancient city of modern Syria, travelling to north India, which was Scythia, in those times. There is an inscription about this in Greek and Aramaic in Palmyra. According to this inscription, this travel happened in 157 CE. This inscription proves that as early as in the second century CE, such travels were doable and normal if not frequent. Through several examples, Andrade proves that such travels and the social networks that enabled them, existed almost around the beginning of Christianity and he calls these networks, socio-commercial networks.

The Apocryphal Text: The Acts of Thomas

In the text, ‘The Acts of Thomas’, which is considered apocryphal, is written the original story of how St Thomas came to India. According to this text, an Indian merchant named Habban went to Jerusalem to purchase a craftsman for his king, the King of Parthia. The king wanted the craftsman to build a palace. The king’s name was Gudnaphar or Gaundaphores. Historically, there are coins with the name of this Indi-Parthian king from 1 BCE and 1 CE. However, there is no supporting proof to conclude that the rest of the story is factual and historical.

The story goes that Habban purchased the Apostle Judas Thomas from the resurrected Jesus himself and took him to India. By a lot, Judas Thomas was allocated to India to preach Christianity but Thomas was unwilling to go because he doubted his ability to teach as strange a people as Indians whose language and customs were unknown to him. This was the context in which Jesus intervened and sold him to the merchant.

On reaching the king’s court, Thomas is entrusted with building a palace and is handed over some money towards it. He spends the entire money on helping poor people and does not put even a single brick of the palace in place. Realising this, the king was angry. He orders Thomas to be executed but by performing a miracle, Thomas bring back the dead brother of the king to life. This miraculous act convinces the king about the divine nature of Christianity and he embraces it followed by many of his subjects.

Thomas performs many miracles and acts including exorcism and resurrection. Then he travels to the neighbouring kingdom ruled by King Misdaeus. Mygdonia, the wife of Prime Minister Charisius, is baptised by him. She stops performing her duties to her husband and this infuriates Charisius. He takes his complaint to the king and as Thomas refuses to answer the king's questions, the king sentences him to death. After spending some time in prison, undergoing a trial in which he proclaims his loyalty to none but Jesus, he is slain by the king’s soldiers on a desolate mountain.

Parthia, ruled by King Gudnaphar, is located between the desert of Khorasan and the Great Salt Desert of Iran, that is, somewhere in today’s Afghanistan, and the kingdom of King Misdaeus remains historically untraceable. Sandariik is the name of the port where the ship of St Thomas is believed to have embarked. Evidence suggests that this port could be in Sindh region and the river could be Indus.

The mount believed to be the burial place of St Thomas is in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, adjacent to the state of Kerala. It is not explained how Thomas reached south India when he died as he was supposed to be in a neighbouring state of the north Indian kingdom, Parthia, if the apocryphal story is true. Nowhere in the Acts of Thomas is a description of the geography, society, or culture of India. Critics point to this omission as an indication of its purely fictional nature. The original text is believed to have been written in the 3rd century CE in Edessa, Syria.

The Oral History of South Indian Saint Thomas

Christians

In the south Indian state of Kerala dwells the Saint Thomas Christians who believe that their ancestors were converted to Christianity in the 1st century CE by Apostle Thomas. They are also called Syrian Christians and Marthoma Suriyani Christians. Historical evidence traces back their origins as a Christian group to the 8th and 9th century CE when they were accepted as the Province of India as part of the Church of the East. The Saint Thomas Christian lore places the activities of Saint Thomas in India around 52 CE as he is believed to have arrived at the ancient south Indian port, Muziris, in Kerala, at that time. As early as the 1st century CE, Kochi, a port town of Kerala close to Muziris, had the presence of Jews. They had already settled there and some view this fact as proof of the possibility that Thomas went to Kerala.

The Songs of Thomas is a Malayalam (language of Kerala) song preserved by tradition among the Saint Thomas Christians. This song says that Thomas, after arriving on the shores of Kerala, established seven churches and converted many people to Christianity including the local king. The song ends with describing the martyrdom of Thomas at a place called Mylapore, which is in present-day Chennai. This version of the life of St Thomas says that he was killed by Brahmins who opposed Christianity. The place where he is believed to have been slain is now called St Thomas Mount and a church stands on the foothills.

Christianity in India: Facts and Fiction

Many historians reject ‘The Acts of Thomas' as a fictional work. They argue that Thomas never came to India. According to them, Christianity in India might have originated in the Sindh region of north India when the trader caravans that travelled to India from Persia were joined by Christian missionaries from Syria and Mesopotamia. These missionaries might have established small Christian congregations in the valley. The proponents of this argument also conclude that Christianity can have spread from this northern region to south India.

The Relics of St Thomas

The Portuguese, when they came to India in the 16th century CE and colonised parts of it, searched for the bones of St Thomas. They took command of the mount in Mylapore, where it was believed that he had been buried. They built a shrine for him there. Earlier in the 14th century CE, when Marco Polo, the great traveller, visited India, he also wrote about the mount. He wrote that the remains of St Thomas had been shifted to Edessa, a town of Syria then, and a place in Iraq now. Marco Polo wrote that the remains were shifted in an earlier period to Edessa.

Marco Polo noted that he saw people from all faiths gathering to pray at the burial place of St Thomas. It was believed that the soil from the place could cure illnesses. The Christian caretakers of the burial place used to do farming for their livelihood. Another travel writer who visited the burial place was Gregory of Tours. His lifetime was in the 6th century AD. He wrote about the huge monastery and church that stood at the burial place.

The Indian Society in the First Century CE

In the 1st century AD, the kingdom of Parthia rose in today’s Afghanistan. The Parthian king, Gudnaphar, ruled between 19 AD and 55 AD. In north India, the dominant religions were Vedic Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Different religions coexisted but the rulers chose which religion to promote. Yet, they did not impose any religion on their subjects. The Vedic era was coming to an end. Vaishnavism, a cult of Hinduism that viewed Lord Vishnu as the supreme God, was gaining popularity. This was some kind of renewal of Vedic Brahmanism. Meanwhile, Buddhism was declining. A lot of political unrest churned the society as local chieftains were clashing with each other for power and these conflicts even threatened the kings. Against this social backdrop, one could assume that if Thomas had gone to north India and carried out mass conversions, he could not have done that without the support from a few powerful kings and he would have made enemies too. The mythical tale about St Thomas's journey to India could be plausible when considering the above aspects. However, the lack of solid evidence weakens this narrative.

Where are the Relics of St Thomas Now?

St Ephrem has written that during his time, the bones of St Thomas were kept in Edessa and pilgrims went to visit this place. The National Catholic Register, a US-based Catholic web portal states that in 1258, the relics of St Thomas were taken to Ortona, in Italy and that they are still kept inside a golden casket in the Basilica of St Thomas. In a church destroyed by ISIS in Iraq’s Mosul, another set of relics of St Thomas, believed to be his finger bones, were found.

There are strong narrative strands in different texts that support the argument that St Thomas preached in India and was martyred there. However, history demands concrete evidence in archaeological and textual form. Gaps and contradictions in the historical narratives about St Thomas keep obscuring a clear conclusion.

References

Bosch, Lourens P. van den, “India and the Apostolate of St Thomas”, In The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas, edited by Jan N Bremmer, 120-148, Leuven: University of Groningen, 2001.

Debevoise, Neilson. C., A Political History of Parthia, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1938.

Grainger, John D., Rome, Parthia, and India: The Violent Emergence of a New World, Yorkshire, Praetorian Press, 2013.

Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988.

Kosambi, D. D., A History of Its Culture and Civilisation, New York, Pantheon Books, 1966. https://archive.org/details/ancientindiahist0000kosa/page/172/mode/2up

Nathanael J Andrade, The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity, 2018.

Eusebius of Caesarea, The Church History, 2007, Paul L Maier (Ed.), Kregel Publications.

Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo, E-Bookrama editions, n.d. Kindle.

Thomas Craughwell, April 28, 2017, Where are the 12 apostles now? National Catholic Register.