Chapter 3 Acts of Thomas in Indian Setting
i. “India” in the Acts of Thomas
The Acts of Thomas does abound in legends as is characteristic of
any apocryphal literature. What is of interest to us in India are
certain factors in the book which touch upon our land and the
mission of Thomas here. In the first place the mention of India in
a writing which had originated in remote Syria and that too in a
remote period of time when communications were in a primitive
state does boost our belief that our country did have an association
with the apostle Thomas. The text of the Acts of Thomas has these
words of Thomas when India fell to his lot: “I am a Hebrew; how
can I teach the Indians?” When he was further coaxed upon to
accept this assignment he seems to have insisted stubbornly,
“Whithersoever Thou wilt, O Lord, send me: only to.India I will not
go...” This stubbornness of character is familiar to those who know
Thomas from the Gospel of John where his attachment to Jesus
borders on obstinacy. At a time when there seemed to have been
a danger at Jerusalem to Jesus and the other disciples, and Jesus
expressed a desire to visit the place for the sake of his friend
Lazarus, he directly opposed the fears of the other disciples with
the words, “Let us also go that we may die with him” (Jn 11:16).
But why was Thomas so stubborn about not taking up India as his
place of mission? He was possibly skeptical about his success there
considering the total strangeness of the land with its alien language
and culture. And could he really, accept a divine mission of difficult
proportions and do justice to the task ahead of him? That should
have been his legitimate preoccupation! But he changed his mind
and accepted the mission, thanks to the great faith he had nurtured
around Jesus.
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ii. King Gundaphar of Gandhara
A second reassuring factor in the Acts of Thomas regarding the
apostle’s mission in India is the mention in this narrative of one
Gundaphar as the king of India. We may set aside all the stories
surrounding such a person as narrated in the Acts of Thomas! But
there is no sufficient reason to set aside the very existence of the
king by such a name. Till the middle of the 19th century there was
no sufficient historical evidence for him and he was considered
legendary. However a large number of coins discovered in Kabul
or Kandahar and in the western and southern parts of Punjab, bear
the name of Gondophares. According to investigations made by
scholars one may reasonably say that the period of this
Gondophares of the coins is between 20 and 45 A.D. His kingdom
lay around Peshwar.
Do the Acts of Thomas give any historic basis for the mission of
Thomas in India? With the discovery of the coins of Gondophares
many an archeologist do seem to accept such a possibility. And
Thomas could have visited the courts of kings during his visit in
India, and one of them could be the Gondophares of the Takh-ti-
Bahi inscription and coins. He was evidently the ruler of an
extensive territory which included as part of it much more of India
than simply a portion of the Peshwar district. Later writings have
identified this ruler as King Gundaphar of Gandhara with his capital
at the ancient Takshasila, famed as a centre for learning7.
The first part of the Acts of Thomas seems to recount the fact that
Thomas did spend part of his ministry in the northern part of India,
in the Parthian empire and it is only then that he travelled towards
the southern part of India. It is to be noted that according to Origen
(A.D 200-251) it was Parthia which fell to the lot of Thomas at the
division of regions among the apostles for their missionary
enterprises. And Parthians figure in the big list of various ethnic
races who were in Jerusalem influenced by the Pentecost
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outpouring. This Parthia lay in the north western part of India
comprising of the present Pakistan, and possibly also parts of
Afghanistan, and hence not too far from India. Hence if the Acts
of Thomas asserts that the territory that fell to the lot of Thomas
was India, it is quite understandable since Parthia was on the
borders of India.
iii. King Misdai of South India?
The second part of the Acts speaks of the ministry of Thomas in
the land of King Misdai also known as Masdai, Mesdai or Misdaios
(Greek) and Misdeus (Latin). Who was this king and what was the
location of his kingdom? The Acts of Thomas simply presents him
as another king in whose kingdom the apostle had his ministry. At
the conversion of the queen the king got annoyed with the apostle
and ordered him to be slain and hence he became a martyr.
While some scholars think that the personage of Misdai is simply
fictitious, there are others who think that the name is a corruption
of Vasudeva8 possibly one Kanishka’s successors. There are also
scholars who identify Misdai with Mahadeva, a potentate in South
India. In fact the general tenor of the second part of the Acts of
Thomas’ from Acts 9 onwards does have a south Indian flavour
with the presence of carts drawn by bulls or donkeys as ordinary
means of transport, as well as of palanquins for ladies of the royal
families. There is also a South Indian touch in the description of
reiterated ablutions before meals, the garments of mourning and the
sashtanga namaskara. In short we may admit a skeleton of history
in the midst of an abundance of court tales and royal intrigues very
characteristic of the South Indian royal households’.
Many scholars read in the Acts of Thomas two areas of Thomas’
mission in India: the first in the Parthian empire where he came as
far as the Indo-Scythian border province of Kandahar; and after
some interval he made a second trip to India and this time to the
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southern parts of the country, when he evangelized Malabar as well
as the Coromandal coast. And it is also surmised that after the first
part of his mission namely in the north western parts of India,
Thomas went back to Palestine after hearing of the death of Mary
in 48 A.D., and returned to India only after the Council of
Jerusalem in 50 A.D.
iv. Acts of Thomas with South Indian Nomenclature.
Our discussion on the mission of St. Thomas the Apostle in India
has been only from the remote insights we receive from the
apocryphal writing, Acts of Thomas10. Before we conclude this
section on the apocryphal background to the mission of Thomas we
should say that there are scholars who are somewhat skeptical
about the historic link between Gondophares and Thomas. They
claim that neither the coins-of Gondophares nor the inscriptions at
Takt-i-bahi have anything to do with Thomas11. But against this
extreme position, a great majority of scholars hold a more
favourable position, almost re-reading the Acts of Thomas, with
Indian, nay South Indian nomenclature. If we divest this book of its
fictitious elements then what we have is that St. Thomas came to
India, preached the Gospel in the Kingdom of a certain king known
as Gundaphar or Gondophares, and converted him to Christianity
and many others along with him. He then proceeded to another
kingdom and this time he converted the queen and several others;
the king was angered at the audacity of the Apostle and had him
killed. Thus Thomas died as a martyr.
Those who take the Acts of Thomas with a more positive
approach, approve of the south Indian apostolate of Thomas even
more enthusiastically. They base themselves on the second part of
the Acts which does contain a south Indian flavour as to the
customs and manners described there. And they maintain that many
a name mentioned in the Kingdom of Masdai are just alterations of
the original names common in the Coromandel coast which was the
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second major part of Thomas’ mission in India. There has been
some imaginative reconstruction of the names of persons and
places making Thomas’ work around Mylapore a greater reality.
The following text may invite our smiles but it is quite relevant for
our story here”.
“Some of the names mentioned in the Acts, in connection with the
visit of the Apostle to the Coromandel Coast, have been considered
fictitious by certain writers, while others have declared them to
have stood for real characters and given them Indian names of their
choice. Sifur has been changed into Sitaraman, Sinthice into Sinna-
Achi, Mygdonia into Magudani, Carish into Krishna, Narkia into
Nari and Tertia into Thirupathi. It is true that the names as they
stand in the acts have a foreign tinct except Vizan, which indicates
the son of King Masdai. The change from Vijayan to Vizan is really
understandable. One of the female characters is called Mygdonia.
It is the name of a country situated on the Macedonian Coast. The
author of the Acts must have used the term to denote a South
Indian lady called Mangaladevi or Mangaladayini. Carish, a male
character, appears in certain texts as Chariseus, or Caritius. It is
possible that the Indian name Karuisan (one who has Karu as his
Lord) became Karish, at the hands of the writer of the Acts. Karu
is an epithet for the God Siva, in Sankskrit. Similarly, Tharika
(protecting), Maneswari (lady of the heart), Nari-Mukya (chief
maid), and Sinna-Achi, must have become respectively Tertia,
Manashar, Narsika and Sindiche, at the hands of the foreign scribe.
The General appears as Sifur in the acts; the term seems to have
been derived from Sipra in Sanskrit, which denotes any one of the
following: Moon, Yama, and Siva. Soma, meaning Moon, is a
common name among the Hindus in South India. In the same way,
Sipra must have been in vogue as a personal name. These
considerations on the nomenclature in the Acts of Judas Thomas
also will force us to conclude that St. Thomas, after leaving the
Kingdom in South India had his subsequent Apostolate on the
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Coromandel Coast mainly among the Hindu population of the
region?
It is also of interest to us that there are writers who even associate
Gondophares with a south Indian king, more precisely a king from
Tamilnadu, Kandapparasa. And the following write up about the rereading
of names is bound to bring up more smiles as to the mission
of Thomas around Mylapore”.
“Some historical writers refer to Kandapparasa or Kandapparajah
as the rule of the kingdom on the Coromandel Coast, where
St.Thomas preached the Gospel and try to maintain that
Kandaparasa is only a variation of the name Gondophares of the
Acts of Judas Thomas. This hypothesis has led to the inference that
the incident of the miraculous palace building related in the Acts
occurred in South India and not in the North. We have already
found that the miracle of the celestial palace building took place at
Taxila, the capital of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares, who
ruled in North India with his dominions adjacent to the river Indus.
Thus, the attempt to identify Kandapparasa with the Indo-Parthian
Gondophares becomes gratuitous. The similarity in sound between
Kandaparasa and Gondophares carries us nowhere. The existence
of a South Indian ruler named Kandapparasa as the contemporaiy
of the Apostle St. Thomas, leads us to the conclusion that King
Masdai alias Mahadeva of the Acts of Judas Thomas must have
been none other than the Kandapparasa under reference.
Kandapparasa occurs as the combination of two words, Kandappa
and Arasa; Kandappa, a personal name, and Arasa, the titular term.
With this splitting up of the word Kandapparasa into its two
component parts, the affinity in sound between Gondophares and
Kandapparasa does not deserve serious consideration at all”.
Conclusion
We may conclude this section on the apocryphal literature and the
role they play in unearthing certain character traits of Thomas the
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Apostle with a feeling of contentment. At least one work of this
literature, namely the Acts of Thomas also known as Judas
Thomas, has been extremely useful in our assessment of the visit
and apostolate of the Apostle Thomas in India. And a re-reading of
the text of the Acts with an application to South India does indeed
bring us to close quarters as far as the Apostle’s mission here is
concerned. It may look a bit too farfetched. But this is certainly not
the only source of our belief that the Apostle had his apostolate in
India, or was involved in a great mission in South India. What then
are the other sources? We have some authentic documents of the
Church almost contemporary to those of the apocryphal literature
and some of them even earlier than the latter. Our next section is
to discuss the Fathers of the Church and the role they play in
assessing the apostolate of St. Thomas in India.
